231 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS LESSONS. 



they die, and return to their dust." "Let the waters 

 bring forth abundantly," was the command ; how per- 

 fectly has it been obeyed ! 



"INFINITE KlCHES IN A LITTLE ROOM." 



The reader, who may be a stranger to the world of 

 wonders to be found in a drop of water, may be told that 

 in the cut at p. 228 are represented in a group some of 

 the most striking specimens of animal and vegetable life 

 to be found in our ponds. Confervoid plants in this 

 admirably engraved cut afford everything needful to the 

 animals seen in it : there is the water-flea, Cyclops (with 

 its one eye), at the bottom; and immediately over it, in its 

 transparent house, supported on its foot-stalk, one of the 

 most beautiful species of Zoophytes, the Stephanoceros, 

 with its beautiful crown and active cilia, occupying the 

 centre of the cut; immediately to its left Melicerta is 

 seen with extended cilia; and directly over that is the 

 strange-looking transparent body of the Water-bear, in 

 two forms, bending over, and turning round the branch 

 of an aquatic plant. Rotifers of several kinds are seen 

 busily occupied in swimming in what to them is a river 

 of water; and, near the top on the right hand, is the 

 Volvox globator, a little vegetable centre of life with future 

 worlds visible through its transparent envelope, rotating 

 on its own axis in the stream just as our world does in 

 air; its diameter is only the thirtieth of an inch, the 

 minute green spots visible on its surface, each of which 

 is a cell, being only the 3500th part of an inch in size. 



