THE YOUNG SCIENTIST. 
39 
SONGS OF THE SCIENCES. 
Oh' merry is the Madrepore that sits beside the sea. 
The cheery little Coralline hath many charms for me ; 
I love the fine Echinoderms of azure, green and gray, 
That handled roughly, fling their arms impulsively away; 
Then bring me here the microscope and let me see the cells, 
Wherein the little Zoophyte like garden floweret dwells. 
We'll take the fair Anemone from off its rocky seat. 
Since Bondelitius has said when fried 'tis good to eat ; 
Dyspeptics from Sea Cucumbers a lesson well may win, 
They blithely take their organs out and then put fresh ones. in. 
The Rotifer in whirling round may surely bear the bell, 
With Oceanic Hydrozoids that Huxley knows so well. 
You've heard of the Octopus, 'tis a pleasant thing to know. 
He has a ganglion makes him blush not red. but white as snow; 
And why the strange Cercaria, to go a long way back. 
Wears ever, as some ladies do, a fashionable " sack :" 
And how the Prawn has parasites that on his head make holes, 
Ask Dr. Cobbold, and he'll say they're just like tiny soles. 
Then study well zoology, and add unto your store 
The tales of Biogenesis and Protoplasmic lore : 
As Paley neatly has observed, when into life they burst, 
The frog and the philosopher are iust the same at first. 
But what's the origin of life remains a puzzle still, 
Xiet Tyndall, Haeckel, Bastian go wrangle as they will. 
Fmich. 
Marvels of Pond Life.— VII. 
NOTICEABLE currents are not always 
produced when the mouth of this 
Floscule is fully expanded. On one occa- 
sion, one having five lobes was discovered 
standing at such an angle in a glass 
trough that the aperture could be looked 
down into. The position rendered it im- 
possible to use a higher power than about 
two hundred linear, but with this, and 
the employment of carmine, nothing like 
a vortex was seen during a whole evening, 
although a less power was sufficient to 
show the ciliary whirlpools made by 
small specimens of Epistylis and Vagini- 
cola, which were in the small vessel. The 
density of the integument was unfavora- 
ble to viewing the action of the gizzard, 
but it could be indistinctly perceived. 
The contractions and subsequent expan- 
sions of the cup, formed by the upper 
part of the creature, may be one way in 
which its food is drawn in, but there is 
no doubt it can produce currents when it 
thinks proper. Sometimes animalcules 
in the vicinity of Floscules whirl about as 
if under the influence of such currrents. 
8ome may be seen to enter the space be- 
tween the lobes, swim about inside, and 
then get out again, while every now and 
then one will be sucked in too far for 
retreat. 
Above the gizzard in the Horned Flos- 
cule,* I have seen an appearance as if a 
* The Horned Floscule {F. cormUa) which I have 
found, and which bred in a glass jar, were not so 
large as those described by Mr. Dobie, as quoted in 
- Pritehard's Infusoria." Mr. Dobie's specimens 
membrane or curtain was waving to and 
fro, while another was kept in a fixed per- 
pendicular position. Mr. Gosse, speak- 
ing of this genus, observes "that the 
whole of the upper part of the body is 
lined with a sensitive, contractile, par- 
tially opaque membrane, which a little 
below the disk recedes from the walls of 
the body, and forms a diaphragm, with -i 
highly contractile and versatile central 
orifice. At some distance lower down an- 
other diaphragm occurs, and the ample 
chamber thus enclosed forms a kind of 
crop, or receptacle for the captured prey." 
"From the ventral side of the ample 
crop that precedes the stomach, there 
springs in F. ornata a perpendicular mem- 
brane or veil, partly extending across the 
cavity. This is free, except at the vertical 
edge, hf which it is attached to the side 
of the chamber, and being ample and of 
great delicacy, it continually floats and 
waves from side to side. At the bottom 
of this veil, but on the dorsal side, are 
placed the jaws, consisting of a pair of 
curved, un jointed but free mallei, with a 
membranous process beneath each." 
were 1—40" when extended; mine about half 
that size, five-lobed, and with a long slender pro- 
boscis, standing in a wavy line outside one lobe. 
Mr. Dobie also describes Sin F. campanulata, with 
five flattened lobes. . The " Micrographic Dic- 
tionary" pronounces these two species " doubt- 
fully distinct." I have three or four times met 
iwith a variety of F. ornata, in which one lobe was 
much enlarged and flattened, but they had no 
proboscis. In what I take for F. cornuta, the horn 
or proboscis has sometimes been a conspicuous 
object, and at others so fine and transparent as 
to be only visible in certain lights. 
