334 
MR. J. DiiLRYMPLE’S DESCRIPTION OF AN INFUSORY 
phagus and embrace on many sides the stomach to its very fundus, where they meet, 
and interlace. These muscles not only approximate the stomach to the pharynx, 
but compress it also, enabling it to discharge the debris of the food. Two Or three 
fine filamentous muscles are attached to the fundus and fixed to the lowest part of 
the tegumentary case of the animal, serving to retract the stomach again when it 
has discharged its contents. The principal food appears to be species of Gonium, and 
other small infusoria; but also at times it will swallow hard and thorny Brachioni, 
and even the young of its own species. The total absence of all intestinal canal 
separates this animal from Notom mata, which has a distinct gut and cloaca, as is 
well observed in the N. claviculata ; and if development of digestive apparatus be 
taken as a distinctive character, it removes this form to a lower grade than any roti- 
ferous animal I am yet acquainted with. 
As it is clear that the growth and nutrition of the animal must proceed from the 
digestion of appropriate food, and as there is no true vascular system, it follows that 
the assimilated fluid must permeate the parietes of the stomach and enter the 
general or peritoneal cavity of the animal, which, however transparent the whole of 
the body appears to be, must be filled with this colourless nutrient fluid or blood. 
In this animal, as well as in the Notommata figured by Ehrenberg, there is a 
peculiar organ, which in the explanation of figure 2 of plate 49, he designates “kie 
men” or gills, and as “ kiernengefasse,” “gill-vessels thicker than the gill, for which 
reason the tremulously moving’ gill cannot be a heart.” 
This peculiar organ consists in a double series of transparent filaments (Plate 
XXXIII. fig. 1 K) (for there is no proof of their being tubes or vessels) arranged from 
above downwards in a curved or semicircular form, symmetrical when viewed in front ; 
or when seen in profile (the most common position of the animal under the microscope) 
as two series of filaments whose convexity is turned towards the exterior of the body. 
These filaments above and below are interlaced, loop-like, while another fine filament 
(Plate XXXIII. fig.lL) passes in a straight line, like the chord of an arc, uniting the two 
looped extremities. To this delicate filament are attached little tags, or appendices, 
whose free extremities are directed towards the interior of the animal, and which are 
observed to be affected by a tremulous, apparently spiral motion, like the twisting of 
a screw. This is undoubtedly due to cilia arranged round these minute appendices. 
I’he tags (Plate XXXIII. fig. 7 B) above described are from eight, twelve, or even 
twenty in number, varying in different specimens, though always present in greater or 
less numbers. There seems to be much obscurity in Ehrenberg’s description, and he 
does not appear to be quite decided as to their proper function ; for though the desig- 
nation of kiemen or gills would infer that he supposed them subservient to the 
purpose of respiration, other observers have suspected them to belong to a cardiac 
system. Now it does not appear consistent with the class of animals to which these 
infusoria belong, to expect tubular vessels or a heart, but nevertheless I believe the 
organs in question to be a peculiar circulating system. 
