118 Marvels of Pond- Life. 



CHAPTER XI. 



NOVEMBER. 



Characteristics of the Polyzoa — Details of structure according to 

 Allmau — Plumatella repens — Its great beauty under proper illu- 

 mination — Its tentacles and their cilia — The mouth and its guard 

 or epistome — Intestinal tube — How it swallowed a Rotifer, and 

 what happened — Curiosities of digestion — Are the tentacles capable 

 of Stinging ? — Resting Eggs, or " Statoblasts " — Tube of Pluma- 

 tella — Its muscular Fibres — Physiological importance of their 

 structure. 



jURING the fag end of last month I observed 

 some fragments of a new creature among 

 some bits of Anacharis, from the Vale of 

 Heath Pond^ and searched for complete and intelligible 

 specimens without effect. Luckily one evening a 

 scientific neighbour, to whom I had given some of the 

 plant for the sake of the beautiful Stephonocei'i which 

 inhabited it, came in with a glass trough containing a 

 little branch, to which adhered a dirty parchment-like 

 ramifying tube, dotted here and there with brown oval 

 masses, and having sundry open extremities, from 

 which some polyp-shaped animals put forth long pearly 

 tentacles margined with vibrating cilia, and making 

 a lively current. The creatures presented an organiza- 

 tion higher than that of polyps, for there was an 



