284 
LITTLE FOLKS 
WHAT ARE THEY DOING? 
Did you ever see such a droll performance as you see going on 
in this picture ? There seems to be a party of little fellows on the 
edge of a tube, throwing themselves about in the wildest way, 
flinging their arms, and bending their bodies into arches. They 
seem to be mourning and lamenting about something that has hap- 
pened down in that hole. I should think they had lost all their 
friends down there. Here's one in front, who actually seems 
throwing himself off backward in his despair. 
They are the strangest creatures we have seen yet, and I must 
tell you all about them. To begin with, they are not so big as you 
see them in the picture ; that is the way they look through a micro- 
scope. In fact, they are only one fortieth of an inch high — that is 
about as tall as one of the periods used in this page. You could 
not see them very well, you perceive, without a good instrument. 
They are alive, and they are Polyps, of the same family as the 
Hydra that I was telling you about. Around the edge of the tube 
you see a sort of network, that is a part of the creatures, and from 
that they grow. The arms which they fling about so restlessly are 
their tentacles, and the heads can be opened wide as you open a 
book. They have mouths and stomachs, and so must eat and live. 
*T 
