60 THE MOSS-ANIMALS, @ 
or tentacles, also prove useful in many other ways. They 
can twist together with incalculable rapidity, barring out 
any objectionable animal which may manifest a dispo- | | 
sition to pry into the crown; or each one can by itself — 
bend over and eject annoying particles; or, if the throat — 
need a little cleaning, force its way down the tube and ` 
clear it, by pushing’; into the stomach whatever may be 4 
clinging to the sides. They are most amusing, however, 
in the angry pettishness they occasionally exhibit toward 
intruding neighbors. First comes an admonitory push, 
then a eet ig one, if the first is not successful, and lastly, 
unmistakeable blows administered with vicious rapidity by 
many threads in unison. Sometimes a “big fish” enters — 
the crown in the shape of an animated Pals perceptible 
only when magnified twenty or thirty times its own size; 
then the sensitive tips of the threads curve together, an 
imprison the coveted morsel. Caged thus in a living net, 
and unable to break through the bars, it is soon exhausted 
by the power of the miniature maelstrom, and swept, in 
spite of many fruitless struggles, down into the gaping 
mouth. 
On the exterior of the tentacles, reaching about half- 
way up their sides, is a thin veil, looped up aid hanging 
gracefully between them like a delicate rufle with pointed 
folds (fig. 4, G). Between this veil and the dark brown 
cell is the pellucid tube, and through its walls we can ex- 
-~ amine the internal organs. Directly under the tongue- 
like projection of the | disc, or epistome, is the nervous 
, Which takes the place of a brain in all the Polyzoa, 
Sk it ~ nerves See to ax os the stom 
