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somewhat rising, so as to give a trumpet-like contour to tlie 
outline. 
One of tlie angular projections of the disk is considerably 
higher than the rest, and this is the dorsal one ; so that the 
plane of the five knobs is not horizontal, but obhque, facing 
forwards. 
A very remarkable feature in the animal, and one to which 
it owes much of its peculiar elegance, is that each knob 
is beset with straight bristles, of exceeding slenderness, and 
of great length, which are not set in one plane, but radiate 
in every direction. Ehrenberg says, there are from five to 
eight on each angle, but probably the poverty of his instru- 
ment deceived him. I have counted from forty to fifty on one 
knob. When the animal contracts, all the bristles are drawn 
parallel into a single pencil, and concealed within the body; 
and this arrangement is well seen as they slowly protrude, in 
the act of eversion. They are motionless when expanded, but 
while protruding, and in the instant of expanding (faking, as Mr. 
Slack well says, on all sides in a graceful shower), the pencil is 
seen to be agitated with a close and rapid thrill or wave, which 
runs along it, and looks much like the flickering of a candle- 
flame. It ceases the instant the disk is expanded. 
The Case. — Like the Steplianoceros, the Flosculciria is a 
householder, dwelling in a tenement of her own construction, 
which, if not very strong and stable, at least serves her turn. 
It is a gelatinous tube of considerably greater diameter than 
the animal’s body, attached by its base to the stem or leaf of 
some water-plant, and standing erect with an open mouth. Its 
outline is even, that is, not thrown into those strong transverse 
folds which that of the Crown-wheel displays,* and in itself is 
so evanescent that it can only be discerned with difficulty as the 
slightest possible film, when clean. When old, however, it 
takes a dull yellowish hue, and becomes conspicuous, from the 
multitudes of minute Navicules, Monads, Microglens, and other 
organisms, and atoms of floccose sediment that are attached to, 
and imbedded in, the evidently viscid surface. The upper 
edge or brim can rarely be detected at all : in instances in 
which I have seen it, it was irregular and ragged, and so 
flexible that when the animal suddenly and forcibly contracted, 
the margin was drawn in after it, inverted for a short distance 
by the force of the vortex. It was evident that its substance 
was thin, inclosing a free cavity, and not solid up to the skin 
of the animal, as in Stephanoceros. A curious contretemps 
once showed me this. A little Pleurotrocha, a vagrant wheel- 
animalcule of another kind, roving about in the inquisitive 
manner common to its family, visited an expanded Floscularia, 
* In one example, I have seen the case of Floscularia ornata lying in & 
multitude of minute and close-set transverse wrinkles, 
