518 A BOTANICAL EXCURSION IN MY OFFICE. 
of these little twigs, place it on a glass slide, put over it 
the cover, and carry it to our microscope. For this ex- 
amination, a power of about one hundred diameters is 
the most satisfactory, say an 38; or 3 objective. Let me 
place the object on the stand, adjust the light and focus, 
and now peer through the eye-glass, and lo ! T our scarcely 
perceptible prize starts into view as a huge subaquean 
forest, or rather cane-brake, with great lafos stems ; 
here and there more sparse and open, here and there 
more close and impenetrable. 
A wonderful land is this we have entered upon, —a * 
land more strange than ever was dreamed of by Eastern 
romance. It has not only a vastly diversified flora, but 
also myriad animal forms. 
If time and space would allow, we might watch the 
little groups of Vorticellas, making, by “theft rapidly- 
moving cilia, numerous whirlpools, which, to many of the 
inhabitants of the drop of water, are as fearful as ever 
maelstrom was to ocean wanderer ; for down in the centre 
of each miniature whirlpool lurks their destruction, to- 
wards which the current resistlessly forces them when 
once within its grasp. Perhaps a huge many-armed 
hydra might be found lurking in the thickets, or the jelly- 
like, formless mass of an Amæba writhe itself into ever- 
varying shapes before us. But we must pass by rotifers, 
infaiorin: entomostracans, arachnids, —all the marvellous 
animal inhabitants to be seen,—as well as the various 
diatoms, desmids, and other plants, save the species which 
is the predominant feature of the scene we have been 
looking at 
The packet of the intense interest excited by these 
microscopic objects in any naturalist who has once fairly 
entered upon the study of them is the fact, that here we 
