52 Marvels of Pond- Life, 



organization, and no process of '' fission '^ can make tlie 

 lusty lean."^ 



The bottles in which these creatures live, in happy- 

 ignorance that they are called by so crackjaw a name 

 as Cothurnia imberbis, were described as Carapaces by 

 Ehrenberg, but they bear no resemblance to the shell 

 of a turtle or crab. They are thrown off by the animals 

 who preserve no other connection with them than the 

 attachment at the bottom. 



The Micrographic Dictionary describes the family 

 Ophrydinaas corresponding to Vorticellina with a cara- 

 pace. Stein places them with Vorticellids, &c., amongst 

 his Peritricha, which are characterised by a spiral 

 wreath of cilia round the mouth. 



Towards the end of the month a great number of 

 black pear-shaped bodies (Stentor niger), visible to 

 the naked eye, were conspicuous in some water from 

 the Kentish Town ponds. Upon examination they 

 were found to be filled with granules that were red by 

 reflected, and purple by transmitted light. Each one 

 had a spiral wreath of cilia, with a mouth situated like 

 those of the stentors, hereafter to be described, but none 

 of them became stationary, and in a few days they all 

 disappeared. Stein divides Ehrenberg^s Stentor igneus 

 from S. nio^er : the creature described seems to have 

 agreed with Stein's igneus, which he describes as having 

 blood-red lilac, cinnabar, or brown-red pigment particles, 

 and as much smaller than his S. niger. In the same 



* Balbiani in his ' Reclierches sur les Phenomenes Sexuels des Infu- 

 soires/ speaks of the Vorticellids as the only Infusoria dividing longi- 

 tudinally. In other species such appearances arise from conjunction. 



