224: MICROSCOPY FOR BEGINNERS. 



fine as hairs, and they glisten and sparkle like lines of 

 crystal as they wave and float and twist the delicate 

 threads beneath your wondering gaze. Then, while you 

 scarcely breathe, for fear the lovely vision will fade, 

 another and another spreads its disk and waves its sil- 

 very tentacles, until the whole surface of that ugly jelly 

 mass blooms like a garden in Paradise blooms not with 

 motionless perianths, but with living animals, the most 

 exquisite that God has allowed to develop in our sweet 

 waters. Perhaps you make an inarticulate cry to your 

 companion, who is probably wondering why you are so 

 still and what you are doing on the ground with the 

 lens so close to the bottle, and as he too gets down and 

 brings his lens to bear, maybe he jars the water, and 

 the lovely Polyzoa flash their tentacles together and 

 dart backward into the mass, leaving it as indescribably 

 ugly as before. If he brings you to task, tell him to 

 wait and look. And while he looks the little bodies 

 again slip outward, the crescentic disks again spread 

 wide open, the shining tentacles unfold and curl and 

 lash the water until once more the ugly jelly mass be- 

 comes a thing of indescribable beauty. This is Pecti- 

 natella, well named the magnificent. 



The jelly is formed by the animals, and is in reality a 

 collection of protective loricae, the huge masses often 

 found being the result of the increase in the numbers 

 of the Polyzoa inhabiting them ; or, as must frequently 

 occur where they are very abundant, of the union of 

 many contiguous growing colonies. A single animal 



