■■"' 



GENUS TRICHOPHRYA. 8ll 



probable that the examples having an elongate contour with cilia developed at their 

 anterior extremity, as chiefly figured by Stein, represent migratory conditions only or 

 zooids about to divide by transverse fission. If, on the other hand, this condition 

 should prove on further acquaintance to be typical of the adult state, it will be desirable 

 to estabUsh a new genus for its reception, and the position it will occupy as an 

 annectant form between the Ciliate and Tentaculiferous classes will be highly 

 significant. A species closely resembling the present form, but possessing a some- 

 what larger number of tentaculate appendages, has been observed by Stein in con- 

 nection with Steittor cmruhus. 



Sphserophrya liydrostatica, Eng. 



Body spherical, bearing numerous, thirty to forty, long, irregularly dis- 

 tributed, distinctly capitate tentacles ; contractile vesicles minute, variable 

 in number, supplemented by a large non-contractile gas-vacuole, having a 

 diameter of one-half that of the body, and which confers upon the animal- 

 cule remarkable buoyancy in the water. Diameter of body 1-300". 



Hab. — Pond water, among Lemna, floating near the surface. 



The possession of a large supplementary non-contractile vacuole, which appar- 

 ently contains air and thus renders the body of the animalcule remarkably light and 

 buoyant in the water, serves to distinguish the form from any of the preceding 

 species. The original account of this t)'pe was communicated by T. W. Engelmann 

 to the ' Zoologischer Anzeiger,' Bd. i., 1878. 



Genus IV. TRICHOPHRYA, C. & L. 



Animalcules illoricate, ovate or elongate, resembing those of Podophrya, 

 but temporarily affixed in a sessile manner to various objects without the 

 intermedium of a supporting pedicle ; tentacles suctorial, variously dis- 

 tributed. 



Trichophrya epistylidis, C. & L. Pl. XLVI. Figs. 12 and 13. 



Body elongate, flattened, bearing from four or five to as many as seven 

 or eight fascicles of capitate suckers which are distributed irregularly 

 throughout its length ; contractile vesicles numerous ; endoplast band-like, 

 curved. Long diameter 1-120". 



Hab. — Fresh water, usually attached throughout its ventral surface to 

 various water plants, or to the branching pedicle of Epistylis plicatilis. 



This Acinetan has been recently obtained in this country by Mr. John Badcock, 

 who in the first place submitted his drawings for the identification of the species to 

 the author. Subsequently, howe^■er, in figuring and describing it,* Mr. Badcock is 

 inclined to regard it as an immature condition only of the stalked species Podophrya 

 quadripartita rather than as an independent type. A careful examination of Mr. 

 Badcock's evidence has however failed to satisfy the author with respect to this 

 presumed identity, and the chief data upon which this result has been arrived at may be 

 thus stated. In the first place, no direct connection was established between these 

 two forms by Mr. Badcock. Trichophrya was first observed by him on some Ccn/erva 

 taken from one of the ponds in the Victoria Park, and it was some weeks sub- 

 sequently that Podophrya quadripartita, also identified for Mr. Badcock by the 

 author, was found growing abundantly on a portion of this Algal that had been 



* " Notes on AcLnetina,'' ' Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society,' Aug. 1S80. 



