106 
THE OCEAN WORLD. 
The Stmtors are inhabitants of fresh, tranquil water, not suhj eC | 
to agitation, and covered with water plants. They are nearly 3 
coloured green, blackish, or blue ; their bodies covered with cib®’ 
They are eminently contractile, and very variable in form. They 
attach themselves temporarily, by means of the cils, at their posted 01 
extremities, when they assume a trumpet-like form, the bell of 
is closed by a convex membrane, the edge being furnished with a r°" 
of very strong obliquely-placed cils, ranged ''j 
a spiral, meeting at the mouth, which is pi® 00 ® 
near this edge. When they swim freely, tb®J 
alternately resemble a club, a spindle, or 11 
sphere. The Stentor Mulleri is seen in po fl “ S 
in the neighbourhood of Paris and elsewhrt 0 ’ 
it has been found even in the basins of ^ 
Jardin des Plantes (Fig. 38). 
The animals which constitute this genus af ‘ 
fixed in the first part of their existence, b* 
d- 
free in the second. So long as they are & & 
they resemble, in then- expanding state, a b® 1 * 
or funnel, with the edges reversed and cili® 
When they become free, they lose their cro^ 
of cils, take a cylindrical form, more or ^ 
ovoid and elongated, and move themselves bb 
means of a new organ. “ There is no anitt^j 
says Dujardin, “ which excites our admiral 
in a higher degree than the Vortical^ 
Infusoria, by their crown of cils, and by ^ 
vortex which it produces ; by their ever-varying forms ; above alb ^ 
their pedicle, susceptible of rapid spiral contraction, by draWi^ 
the body backward and again extending it. This pedicle is a b® 
membranous band, thicker upon one of its edges than the other, ^ 
containing on the thicker side a continuous channel, occupied, at l®® 3 
in part, by a fleshy substance, analogous to that of the interior of ^ 
body. During contraction, this thick edge is shortened more tb® 1 ’ 
the thin side, and hence results the precise form of the spiral of ^ 
corkscrew. 
Fig. 38. Stentor M iilleri (Enr.) 
magnified 75 times. 
