ANIMAL LIFE IN PONDS & STREAMS 



in which to bring our captures home ; for, of course, 

 animals which dwell in water need not be dried on 

 the journey home. Various useful accessories for 

 the student of pond life are sold at very reasonable 

 rates by most scientific instrument makers. 



We shall find many representatives of the animal 

 world in our pond and exceedingly interesting most 

 of them will prove. From the mud we may obtain 

 the " protean animalcule," known to scientists as 

 Amodha Proteus, the most lowly of all animals. 

 Though this creature is plentiful and just visible to 

 the naked eye, he is not easy to separate from his 

 surroundings. He is almost colourless and therefore 

 paler than the mud. Having secured him on the 

 end of a glass rod, let us examine him in a drop of 

 water on a slide. At first he will remain motionless, 

 as a protest against being disturbed; we shall not 

 have to wait long, however, for soon one part of his 

 body will be seen to protrude and then grow larger 

 and larger till it forms a false foot; other parts 

 may follow suit, till he is more elongate than oval, 

 and he moves in the direction of his false foot with 

 a curious gliding motion. His pace is not great and 

 has been calculated at a twenty-fifth of an inch in 

 an hour. Really the " protean animalcule " is little 

 more than an animated drop of jelly, a fact we can 

 substantiate by watching him feed. His food con- 

 sists of minute water plants such as diatoms, and 

 when one of these plants comes within his line of 

 march he simply surrounds it with his false feet 

 and, as it were, flows around it. When he has 



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