THE MINUTE. 



vortex ; and the little giddy monads, that are 

 whirling heedlessly along, may be seen to be thus 

 entrapped by the living whirlpool, one after an- 

 other, 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 capacious 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. Here is one which may re- 

 mind us of a guinea-pig in its general outline, but 

 you must suppose the two hind-feet to be changed 

 into a divergent fork, and the fore-feet to be oblit- 

 erated.* It is a most restless little rogue ; ranging 

 among the filamentous leaves of the Myriophvl- 

 limi with incessant activity, he now pokes his 

 way through some narrow aperture, using his 

 curious forked foot as a point of resistance, now 

 pauses to nibble among the decaying rind, and 

 now scuttles off through the open water to some 

 other part. We see his large eye, shining with the 

 colour of a ruby, and set, like that of Polyphemus, 

 right in the middle of his forehead, and his curious 

 apparatus of jaws, the points of which are pro- 

 truded from the front of his head, and vigorously 

 worked, when he is grubbing among the decaying 

 vegetable matter, adding continually morsel after 

 morsel to the great mass of yellow-green food, 

 which is already swelling out his abdomen to a 

 * Notommata lacinulata. 

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