OF VOKTICELLA DESCRIBED. 39 



it, along with a drop of water upon a slip of glass, 

 to the stage oT the microscope, a sight was presented 

 of great wonder and loveliness : 



' The more I fixed mine eye, 

 Mine eye the more new wonders did espye 1 * 



Let the reader imagine a tree with slender, grace- 

 fully curved, and tapering branches thickly studded 

 over with delicate flower-bells in place of leaves. 

 Let him suppose the bells to be shaped somewhat 

 between those of the fox-glove and convolvolus, and 

 the stein, branches, bells, and all, made of the purest 

 crystal. Let him further conceive every component 

 part of this singular structure to be tremulous 

 with life-like motion, and he will have as correct 

 an idea as words can give of the complex form of 

 this minute inhabitant of the deep. Moreover, while 

 gazing at it through the microscope, the observer is 

 startled by the sudden collapse of the entire structure. 

 The lovely tree has shrunk together into a dense ball, 

 in which the branching stem lies completely hidden 

 among the flower-bells themselves closed up into 

 little spherules, so closely packed together that the 

 entire mass resembles a piece of herring-roe. This 

 contraction is so instantaneous that the mode in 

 which it is accomplished cannot be observed until 

 the tree is again extended. As the re-extension 

 takes place very slowly, we are enabled to observe 

 that each branchlet has been coiled in a spiral form, 

 like the thread of the simple Vorticella previously 



