A SUCCESSFUL POND HUNT 
180 
In the first pool I saw at a glance that there was a 
promise (afterwards confirmed) of Spirogyra in conjugation, 
which I wanted for a botanical class. The water was also 
full of Entomostraca, watermites, and beetles. 
The second pool we visited was thick with Vole ox r/lobator, 
amongst which were plenty of Diaptomus castor and the 
larvae of Corethm plwnicornis, the glass-larva, which latter 
wonderfully transparent larva, with its curious kidney-shaped 
air-vessels in its chest and tail by which it floats horizontally, 
was abundantly found in nearly all the pools. 
From the last and one of the largest pools I was glad to 
pull out some transparent Nitella, which proved to be Nitella 
Jiexilis, not, I think, previously recorded for Worcestershire. 
I could see that it was nicely covered with various living- 
animals, and the first dip from this pool showed that the 
water was thick with countless numbers of the Infusorian, 
Peridinium tabulation. I then threw in my drag and pulled 
out some of the Potamogeton, which I found to be bristling 
with the universal favourite of microscopists, the wonderful 
building Rotifer, Melicerta rimjens. 
I was well pleased with my visit, and could see with my 
pocket lens that there were many free Rotifers and Infusoria, 
too small to identify without the more powerful table micro¬ 
scope ; so when I called at my studio on my return to deposit 
my collections I took a hasty glance at the Nitella, and soon 
found amongst a host of interesting organisms a beautiful 
Floscularia longicaiulata , which was discovered near Aberdeen 
for the first time by Mr. Hood in 1871 (see “ Royal Micro¬ 
scopical Society’s Journal,” 1878), and which has not 
previously been recorded in England. I could with pleasure 
have studied this little bit of Nitella, and the inhabitants that 
clothed it, for hours, but it was so late that I was obliged to 
defer further examination of it. On Monday I was pleased 
to find an Infusorian I had not seen before, Phalansterium 
ilajitatum , which Mr. Saville Kent reports in his Manual of 
the Infusoria as not having been discovered in Great Britain ; 
his description and figure were copied from the German 
publication of Stein. The small zoophyte trough in which 
I have discovered this has remained unchanged in the 
Society’s library ever since, forming a diminutive aquarium, 
and a good part of the organisms enumerated below I have 
seen in this small portion of my gathering. 
As we were walking round, the gentleman holding the 
farm told us the cattle in the neighbourhood suffered from the 
fluke, so I at once looked for the water snails, which usually 
form the intermediate host, giving out the Cercaria which 
