Marvels of Pond- Life, 69 



CHAPTER VI. 



MAY. 



Floscularia cormita— Euchlaiiis triquetra — Melicerta rlngens — its 

 powers as brickmaker, architect, and mason— Mode of viewing the 

 Melicerta— Use of glass-cell — Habits of Melicerta — Curious 

 Attitudes — Leave their tubes at death — Carchesium — Epistylis — 

 Their elegant tree forms — A Parasitic Epistylis like the " Old Man 

 of the Sea " — Halteria and its Leaps — Aspidisca Lynceus. 



AY^ the first of summer months, and of old 

 famous for floral games, which found their 

 latest patrons in the chimney-sweeps of 

 London, is a good time for the microscopist among the 

 ponds, for the increase of warmth and heat favours both 

 animal and vegetable life, and so we found as we car- 

 ried home some tops of myriophyllum, and soon dis- 

 covered a colony of tubicolor rotifers among the tiny 

 branches. They proved to be Floscules, generally 

 resembling the F. ornata, described in a previous page, 

 but having a long slender proboscis hanging like a 

 loose ringlet down one side. The cilia or hairs were 

 not so long as in. the Beautiful Floscules we had before 

 obtained, nor was their manner of opening so elegant ; 

 but they were, nevertheless, objects of great interest, 

 and were probably specimens of the Floscularia cornuta. 

 A swimming rotifer in a carapace somewhat fiddle- 



