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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
parent worm-like larvae of flies, a blood- worm or two (also fly 
larvae, these); half-a-dozen pupae of gnats alternately floating to 
the surface and vigorously scuttling down again ; some water- 
fleas, minute leech-worms ( Planaria ), and young pond-snails ; 
these chiefly in the phial of bottom sediments. Such are our 
captures, all capable of affording both amusement and instruc- 
tion, but not the things we came for. We are out on the quest 
for Kotipera, and of these the water reveals but few. Gnat- 
grubs and water-fleas are particularly inimical to the elegant 
little denizens of the pools that we are studying, and where the 
former abound the latter will generally prove to be sufficiently 
scarce. 
But nil desperandum ! There is hope yet in the submerged 
vegetation ; and so, stooping down by the ditch-brink, we drag 
up a mass of the water- crowfoot, the leaves of which, when 
growing beneath the surface, are cut into deep and slender 
finger-like filaments, while those which he on the top are compa- 
ratively entire. A few of the lowest leaves, — the most ragged- 
looking, half-decayed, half covered with soft sediment, — are 
quickly plucked off, and pushed into one of the phials of water, 
and with these we go home in hope. 
Seated before the microscope, one of these ragged filamentous 
leaves is cut off, and laid on the glass bottom of our live-box, a 
drop of water is put on it, and the glass cover pressed down. 
Now the filaments are examined in detail, with a low power, 
and presently we discover seated on them, as we had hoped, 
specimens of the lovely Floscularia orncita, which must now 
be described. (See plate x., fig. 1.) 
With sufficient general resemblance to the Crown animalcule 
to warrant our uniting these two in one family, the Floscule 
differs from it in the following generic characters : — 
GENUS FLOSCULARIA (Oken). 
Frontal lobes short, broad, knobbed, expanded ; ciliary setae 
very long, radiating-, crowded about the knobs ; jaws each of 
two teeth. 
This genus, especially in its most common and best known 
species, F. ornata, is one of exquisite delicacy. It is far inferior 
in size to the Stephanoceros, and cannot compete with it in 
majesty of form, but it, perhaps, surpasses that fine species in 
elegance and grace. It may be compared to a long tubular 
flower, with a five-angled petal, somewhat like that of a 
convolvulus, the tube swollen, and contracted below the hp, 
and seated on the end of a long stalk. A glance at the figure 
in plate x. will, however, give a more exact idea of the grace- 
ful animal than this comparison, which yet has sufficient 
vraisemblance to have obtained for it more than one scientific 
