118 Animalcules in the Winter. 



ANIMALCULES IN THE WINTER. 



BY PROFESSOR RYMER JONES,, F.R.S. 



I* is but too generally taken for granted that during the win- 

 ter months there is a suspension of activity in the world of 

 animalcules, and we have not unfrequently heard our friends 

 speak as hopelessly of obtaining Infusoria at Christmas for mi- 

 croscopical exhibition, as of gathering hedge-flowers and May- 

 blossoms amid the snows of January. Indeed, were we to 

 follow the directions usually given for their procurement, the 

 one and the other would be equally unobtainable . Nevertheless, 

 according to our own experience, winter is the very time for 

 observing the infusorial races in their full luxuriance ; at no 

 other period of the year are certain forms of them so easily 

 procurable. We well remember in our younger days sallying 

 forth to Hampstead ponds or Blackheath, equipped with phials 

 and ring-nets and dipping bottles secundum artem, and many 

 a pleasant summer's day have we thus spent in vain endeavours 

 to collect rare species, only obtainable, as we were then told to 

 believe, in specified localities and at particular seasons. Expe- 

 rience has taught us better, and it will perhaps not only save 

 our readers much valuable time, but ensure them a rich abun- 

 dance of specimens of all kinds at any period, if they bear 

 in mind the following circumstances in connexion with the 

 natural history of the Infusoria generally. We have endea- 

 voured to show in a former communication that infusorial 

 animalcules are always to be found congregated in the vicinity 

 of aquatic plants, many of them appearing to prefer certain 

 forms of vegetation. It is not, however, with living, but with 

 decaying vegetable matter that they are associated ; it is upon 

 the effete elements of plants that they feed, the rotting atoms 

 just about to decompose afford them nourishment, they seize 

 upon the macerated tissues of vegetables whilst they are still 

 organic particles, and before they disband themselves into 

 their component gases, restore them to the cycle of organized 

 existences. Far from perishing with the plants upon which 

 they seem to live, it is only by the death and decay of the 

 vegetable world that they are called forth in full force and 

 activity ; and it is more especially during the winter, that is, 

 when rotting leaves and decaying plants encumber the bottoms 

 of our ponds, when the " fat weed" dissolves itself to slime, 

 and the tissues of perishing vegetation are diffused through the 

 mud and sediment of the pool, that they can be obtained in 

 their greatest variety. 



With this insight into the habits of the Infusoria, the micro- 



