( 49 ) 
III. — On a New Operculated Inf usorian from New Zealand. 
By F. W. Hutton, Professor of Zoology in tlie University of 
Otago. 
{Read before the Eoyal Microscopical Society, March G, 1878.) 
In the ‘Monthly Microscopical Jonmal’ for 1869, vol. i. p. 289, 
Mr. W. S. Kent described, under the name of Cothurnia opercu- 
ligera, an infusorian hearing an operculum. Last November, in a 
fresh-water lagoon near Dunedin, I found a very similar form in 
considerable abundance. The New Zealand species, however, differs 
from C. opercnligera in h5,ving the pedicle much shorter than the 
lorica, and in the aperture of the lorica being oblique. 
Cothurnia furcifer , x 400. a, operculum. 
In adult specimens the lorica is of a deep chestnut brown, and 
opaque ; it is generally more or less crumpled, hut sometimes 
smooth. The aperture is round, entiie, and oblique to the axis 
of the lorica. The average length of the lorica is sio". The 
operculum {a) is circular, the same size as the aperture, and of 
the same colour as the lorica; it is attached to the animal just 
below the peristome, on that side towards which the aperture 
slopes. The pedicle is transparent, ve y short (one-sixth the 
length of the lorica), or occasionally absent ; it is attached at its 
proximal end to the conferva, on which it lives, by a circular disk 
of about the diameter of the lorica, and of the same brown colour. 
The animal is colourless, considerably smaller than the lorica, and 
attached at the base without any stalk. The contractile vesicle is 
central. The peristome is surrounded by a moderate number of 
