FLOSCULE AND VOL VOX GLOBATOR 189 



The old-fashioned and nearly obsolete exhortation 

 given by the photographer preparatory to taking a 

 portrait, ' Steady now, please ; one, two, three,' would 

 be wasted in this case, for the volvoces would have 

 spun round more than a dozen times on their axes, 

 and plants have no regard for our language ; yet 

 they have been rapidly photographed by the Sciopti- 

 con Company of Highbury Quadrant, and by Mr. 

 Hambridge, the clever amateur photographer of 

 Folkestone, so that we are enabled, in the absence 

 of the living plants, to place slides of volvox in our 

 lanterns, and thereby show the general structure of 

 this remarkable object, tremendously enlarged, to our 

 audiences. 



One of these tiny plants in a miniature tank of 

 water, placed under a microscope, is an object of 

 marvellous beauty. The light passes through its 

 green sphere and reveals a beautiful membraneous 

 envelope, studded at regular intervals with points of 

 green, which under a higher power show the ever 

 busy and mysterious cilia or lashes. 



We must now show that the moving power pos- 

 sessed by volvox is no haphazard motion. Take a 

 single specimen in a drop of water, place it in a live- 

 box, or between two thin glass slips, very gently 

 press it, so as to retain it in one position without 

 causing it to burst. Then view it with a one-fifth 

 objective and a good light. Pairs of cilia, before 

 invisible, will now be seen at intervals along its 

 surface. Although the volvox is in captivity, yet the 



