160 THE MINUTE. 



Disks of clear jelly* are seen, which are continually altering 

 their outline, so that you soon come to the conclusion 

 that they have no particular form, but every imaginable 

 one in turn. The mass, which seems a mere drop of thin 

 glaire, almost or quite homogeneous, with only one or two 

 bubbles in it, pushes out points and projections from its 

 outline, excavates other parts, lengthens here, rounds off 

 a point there, and this as long as we look at it, so that it 

 never appears twice in the same shape. Here a tiny 

 atom-f- arrests the eye by its singular movements. Its 

 appearance is that of an irregular ball, with a bright spot 

 near the circumference ; the whole surface set with bristles 

 projecting obliquely from the periphery, not perpendicu- 

 larly, much thicker and stronger in the vicinity of the 

 bright spot. It remains in one place spinning round 

 and round upon its centre, sometimes so rapidly as to 

 preclude any sight of its distinctive characters, at others 

 more deliberately, displaying its bristles and surface. 

 Sometimes it rolls over in all directions, as if to let us see 

 that it is sub-spherical, not discoid. And now and then 

 it takes a sudden spring sideways, to a distance perhaps 

 twenty times its diameter, when it spins as before, or else 

 skips about several times in succession. Altogether this 

 is a very active little merry- andrew. 



A great oblong purplish mass | comes rolling along, a 



very Triton among the minnows. He suddenly arrests liis 



headlong course, makes his hinder-end take hold of a 



fragment of leaf, and unfolds his other end into an elegant 



* Amcvba. + Perhaps TWcAodino jrawdmcWa. % Stentor. 



