CHAPTER VI.
MAY.
Floscularia cornuta—Euchlanis triquetra—Melicerta ringens—Its Powers as Brickmaker, Architect, and Mason—Mode of Viewing the Melicerta—Use of Glass Cell—Habits of Melicerta—Curious Attitudes—Leave their Tubes at Death—Carchesium—Epistylis—Their Elegant Tree Forms—A Parasytic Epistylis like the "Old Man of the Sea"—Halteria and its Leaps—Aspidisca lynceus[69]
CHAPTER VII.
JUNE AND JULY.
Lindia torulosa—Œcistes crystallinus—A Professor of Deportment on Stilts—Philodina—Changes of Form and Habits—Structure of Gizzard in Philodina Family—Mr. Gosse's Description—Motions of Rotifers—Indications of a Will—Remarks on the Motions of Lower Creatures—Various Theories—Possibility of Reason—Reflex Actions—Brain of Insects—Consensual Actions—Applications of Physiological Reasoning to the Movements of Rotifers and Animalcules[76]
CHAPTER VIII.
AUGUST.
Mud Coloured by Worms—Their Retreat at Alarm—A Country Duck-Pond—Contents of its Scum—Cryptomonads—Their Means of Locomotion—A Triarthra (Three-limbed Rotifer)—The Brachion or Pitcher Rotifer—Its Striking Form—Enormous Gizzard—Ciliary Motion inside this Creature—Large Eye and Brain—Powerful Tail—Its Functions—Eggs[86]
CHAPTER IX.
SEPTEMBER.
Microscopic Value of Little Pools—Curious Facts in Appearance and Disappearance of Animalcules and Rotifers—Mode of Preserving them in a Glass Jar—Fragments of Melicerta Tube—Peculiar Shape of Pellets—Amphileptus—Scaridium longicaudum—A Long-tailed Rotifer—Stephanoceros Eichornii—A Splendid Rotifer—Its Gelatinous Bottle—Its Crown of Tentacles—Retreats on Alarm—Illumination Requisite to see its Beauties—Its Greediness—Richly-coloured Food—Nervous Ganglia[97]
CHAPTER X.
OCTOBER.
Stentors and Stephanoceri—Description of Stentors—Mode of viewing them—Their Abundance—Social Habits—Solitary Stentors living in Gelatinous Caves—Propagation by Divers Modes—Cephalosiphon limnias—A Group of Vaginicolæ—Changes of Shape—A Bubble-blowing Vorticella[107]