FRESH-WATER TOLYZOA. 221 



CHAPTER IX. 



FKESH-WATER POLYZOA. 



THE reader now approaches a group of microscopic 

 animals whose beauty is so exquisite, so delicate, so re- 

 fined in its comeliness and grace, that no description 

 could be too extravagant, no rhetoric too fervid when 

 applied to the charming little creatures. Yet most of 

 this fairness seems wasted so far as human appreciation 

 is concerned, for how few among the millions of human 

 beings in all the land know, or care to know, what 

 the Polyzoa are, or how they look, or where they live, 

 or whether they live at all ? Nature was never in bet- 

 ter mood than when she began the development of the 

 Polyzoa, so she fashioned them with care, and placed 

 them most abundantly in all our slow streams and shal- 

 low ponds, where they live and die and melt away in 

 the shade of the lily-leaves, where no human eye sees 

 their loveliness until a wondering lover of Nature spies 

 them and is happy. 



The word Polyzoa is formed of two Greek words 

 meaning " many animals," referring to their habit of 

 living in colonies which sometimes reach an immense 

 size. They are, with but one exception, always at- 

 tached to some submerged object, except immediately 

 after leaving the egg, when the young animal leads a 



