164 THE MINUTE. 



There may be perhaps fifty hairs in each pencil, which 

 radiate from their common base in all directions, and, as 

 they are graduated in length, the effect of these hairs is 

 most charming. Any little shock, such as a jar to the 

 table, or the shutting of a door, alarms the beautiful crea- 

 ture, and it suddenly closes up its elegant flower, and 

 retreats into its tube, the hairs forming a cylindrical 

 bundle as it goes down. It presently emerges again, how- 

 ever, and unfolds its array as before. The pencils of 

 hairs are carried quite motionless when expanded, but 

 when the united bundle is in the act of protrusion, a kind 

 of thrill, a quivering wave, is frequently seen to run 

 through it from end to end. There is a wreath of rotat- 

 ing cilia on the face of the disk, the effect of which is to 

 draw floating bodies around into its vortex; and the 

 little giddy monads, that are whirling heedlessly along, 

 may be seen to be thus entrapped by the living whirl- 

 pool, one after another, and engulphed in the transparent 

 prison. And there we may follow them with our eye, and 

 watch their fate. Hurled round and round in the capa- 

 cious crop, a pair of nipper-like jaws at length catches 

 hold of them, gives them a squeeze, lets them go round 

 again, presently seizes and nips them again, until, after 

 a few preliminary bruisings of this sort, the ill-fated 

 atom suddenly goes with a gulp down a kind of trap-door 

 into the true digestive stomach, and is presently dimmed 

 and lost in the mass. 



Several tiny creatures are labouring with the most 

 praiseworthy industry among the close leaves of the plant. 



I 



