Transactions of the Society. 
16 
sometimes see, floating in the water of a live-trough, a tangle of what 
looks like spider’s web. It is, I believe, a chance gathering of the 
threads spun by a swarm of the larger Rotifera. On one of these 
threads, I have sometimes seen a line of minute creatures (1/250 in. 
long) hanging on by their toes, and whirling round, one after another, 
like boys on an iron railing, or rather like professional athletes on 
a horizontal bar. It is hardly possible that they get their food in 
this way, for the pace is so great ; besides, at other times, they flit about 
among the algae with a decorum much more suitable to the important 
business of dining. 
But why should I adduce further examples ? Higher up in the 
scale, the games of animals are obvious to all ; as are also, I think, 
their health, their leisure, and their happiness. Where they lead 
unhealthy and unhappy lives, I fear that man’s brutality, or his 
injudicious kindness, are too often to blame. 
All such speculations as these, however, lead to burning questions; 
for man is much too closely kin to the lower animals not to be 
conscious, that the laws, which affect their conduct, are but a rough 
sketch of those which affect his own. Still I may be permitted to say, 
without offence, that we have much to learn from our dumb brethren ; 
and that we sometimes cut sorry figures compared with them. Indeed, 
we can only wince and be silent, when we read the caustic lines that 
sum up the discourse of Luath and Caesar, — 
“ Then up they gat, and shook their lugs, 
Kejoiced they werena men but dogs.” 
Of the outward condition of the brute creation, and of the 
happiness that falls to its lot, we can perhaps form an opinion that 
approximates to the truth, though even here the same facts receive 
widely different interpretations. But of the sensations and emotions 
of the humbler animals what can we know ? Of the import to them 
of those phenomena, which make up our own familiar world, we can- 
not conjecture. We can but make feeble guesses at the causes of 
their actions; causes lost in one of the profoundest abysses with 
which our reason can attempt to cope. I have seen actions among 
the Rotifera that seemed to betoken the possession of memory, con- 
siousness, and choice ; but, without the means of testing the matter 
by experiment, it would be rash indeed to assert that they possess 
them. Still, what could hole more rational than the following conduct 
in a Floscularia campanulata ? It had stretched itself well out of 
its case, and, fully expanded, was drawing one victim after another 
down to the bottom of its coronal cup, when there slipped into the 
latter, almost filling it, a Euplotes charon — one of the oval, style- 
bearing Infusoria. Now the Floscule’s habit, when it is disturbed, is 
to fold up its cup, draw it into its body, and dart back into its tube. 
It does this scores of times during the day, and a whole series of 
actions — the pressing of the lobes of the cup together, their proper 
folding, their withdrawal within the body, the contraction of the foot, 
