132 RAMBLES AND REVERIES. 



swimming amongst the tentacles, as if unconscious 

 of danger. All of a sudden it went down the whirl- 

 pool leading to the mouth, was rolled up by a 

 process that could not be traced, and, without an 

 instant's loss of time, was seen shooting down in 

 rapid descent to the gulf below, where it looked 

 like a potato-shaped mass, utterly destitute of its 

 characteristic living form. Having been made into 

 a bolus, the unhappy rotifer, who never gave the 

 faintest sign of vitality, was tossed up and down 

 from the top to the bottom of the stomach, just as 

 a billiard ball might be thrown from the top to 

 the bottom of a stocking. This process went on for 

 hours, the ball gradually diminishing in size, until 

 at last it was lost in the general brown mass with 

 which the stomach was filled. The bottom of the 

 stomach seems well supplied with muscular fibres, 

 to cause the constrictions by which the work is 

 chiefly performed; and, by keeping a colony for a 

 month or two, I had many opportunities of seeing 

 my Polyzoa at their meals." 



The colony goes on enlarging by the development 

 of fresh cells, but new colonies are originated from 

 what are called statoblasts, germs very much like 

 the " winter eggs " of some other animals. 



The muscles which draw the animal within its 

 cell are of that peculiar type of muscular structure 

 called "striped," and which amongst the higher 

 animals at any rate betokens voluntary action, or the 

 exercise of will. Has this tiny creature then a will 

 of its own ? Well, it can retract itself into its cell 

 very rapidly, and this it will do at the least sign of 



