CYPHIDiE. 
149 
of fresh water, and are to be found in every pond and 
ditch where the water remains stagnant, but not putrid. 
They are not so prolific as the Cyclopidse, but in some 
of the larger species we can count sometimes, according 
to Jurine, as many as twenty-four eggs. The males 
have never yet been discovered, and the act of copu- 
lation has never been witnessed by any author, with 
the exception of Ledermuller, who says he has seen them 
in the act, and gives a representation of them in that 
state. I have frequently witnessed two individuals in 
much the same situation as those figured by Ledermuller, 
but it did not appear to me that they were at the time 
engaged in copulation ; and as neither Muller , De Geer, 
Jurine, nor Straus have ever witnessed them in the act, 
Ledermuller must in all probability have mistaken the 
nature of their junction. Straus states that every spe- 
cimen he has examined has been laden with eggs, which 
makes him ask, “ Are they hermaphrodites ? or do the 
males only appear at some particular season of the year?” 
Jurine has collected eggs immediately after they had 
been deposited by the parent animal, has isolated them, 
and seen them safely hatched. He has then isolated the 
young after they were hatched, and found that they 
became pregnant without the intervention of the male. 
They must either, therefore, be hermaphrodites, or, as in 
the Daphniadse, one copulation suffices not only to im- 
pregnate the female for life, but the succeeding genera- 
tions also ; as the males of theDaphniadse, too, appear only 
at particular seasons of the year, and in small numbers, 
it is probable that the males of the Cypridse will be found 
hereafter by succeeding observers. The eggs are perfectly 
spherical, and are deposited by the animal upon some solid 
body, such as part of a plant, &c., in a mass, which at 
times, says Straus, consists of some hundreds from various 
individuals, the mother fixing them to the surface of the 
body on which they are deposited, by means of a glutinous 
kind of substance, and then leaving them. When the 
animal is about to lay, it fixes itself, says Jurine, so firmly 
