1 68 SECRETS OF EARTH AND SEA 



have kept it for years in that state and then revived it 

 by moisture into full activity and growth. I used also at 

 one time to keep in my laboratory a supply of the dried 

 yellow lichen from apple-trees, in which one could always 

 rely upon finding the animalcules called "Macrobiotus " 

 or " water- bears" ready to be revived from a desiccated 

 condition, after three or four years passed in that condition. 

 Many of the Rotifers carry their eggs when ripe 

 extruded from the body in two bunches or clusters, as is 

 the habit also of the little microscopic shrimps known as 

 Cyclops. There is a whole group of Rotifiers which fix 

 themselves by the tail, when full grown, to some solid 

 support. Each then forms a protective tube or case 

 around itself, from the mouth of which it puts forth its 

 wheel-apparatus and into which it can retire for pro- 

 tection. Some of the largest and most beautiful of the 

 wheel animalcules belong to this group of fixed or 

 sedentary Rotifers. The crown animalcule (Stephano- 

 ceros) is one of these, having what are discs edged with 

 vibrating hairs in the common Rotifer — here drawn out 

 into a circlet of tapering lobes like the points of a 

 coronet (Fig. 37 {bis), B). Another is the floscule 

 (Floscularia), in which the wheel-apparatus has the form 

 of five knobs arranged on a pentagonal disc around 

 the mouth (A in same figure). Each knob has a 

 bundle of excessively fine, long, stiff, motionless hairs 

 spreading out from it ready to entangle food particles 

 which may drift into contact with them. I used to find 

 the stems of the fresh-water polyp (Cordylophora) of 

 Victoria Dock a sure source of supply of these fine little 

 creatures. When seen under the microscope as brightly 

 illuminated glassy florets on a black ground (by what is 

 called " dark ground illumination " ) their strange delicacy 

 and beauty cannot be surpassed. A rare species of 

 floscule (which I have never seen) has extra-long and fine 



