372 EVENINGS AT THE MICROSCOPE 



the microscope, is one expanding in the highest vigor and 

 beauty. 



It is a long trumpet- shaped body of granular flesh, the 

 mouth of which just reaches the brim of the cup, over 

 which it spreads on all sides. From its margin spring 

 some eighteen or twenty tentacles the exact number vary- 

 ing in different individuals arranged in one or two close- 

 set circles, like a crown. These organs, which, as you 

 see, fall into elegant double curves, like the branches of 

 a chandelier, are roughened with knobbed rings, some- 

 thing like the horns of a goat; this structure we will pres- 

 ently submit to more close examination. 



In the midst of the space surrounded by the tentacular 

 crown there is protruded, at the pleasure of the animal, a 

 large, fleshy, funnel-shaped mouth, the lips of which are 

 highly sensitive and versatile, continually changing their 

 form protruding, contracting, bending in upon themselves, 

 now closing, now opening the mouth, and, as it were, 

 testing the immediate vicinity like a very delicate organ 

 of some unknown sense. 



The whole polype is much too minute for us to at- 

 tempt, with any probability of success, the amputation of 

 one of the tentacles with scissors. But by cutting off a 

 polype, cell and all, and putting it into the compressorium, 

 we may be able, by means of the graduated pressure, to 

 flatten the whole, and thus discern the gnarled structure 

 of the tentacles. A very high magnifying power is needed 

 for this. 



Here, then, we have one of the tentacles flattened be- 

 tween the glass plates, but still retaining its integrity. We 

 find that the thickenings are similar in character to those 

 of the tentacles of Sarsictj which we lately observed. They 





