Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/671

Rh might fairly hear the click of her teeth, so large and voracious does she appear.

Sometimes an animal is betrayed into the opening too large for the Floscule to manage, and it is very amusing to watch its efforts to escape, and to see the Floscule try to devour it; she makes many attempts to take it into her mouth, but, at last, seeming to become discouraged, she opens wide the door and gives it permission to leave.

Fig. 3 introduces us to one of the most lovely of microscopic objects, the Tree Vorticella (Carchesium polypinum). Although this animal cannot be said to build a house, yet, in one sense, it is an architect, for a tree is built up in some way, and the little bell-shaped creatures hang on the ends of the branches, where they look more like flowers than animals. The stem of the tree is transparent and seems to be jointed, and the little creatures can swing the branches about, and even throw them into a spiral coil, so as to bring them close to the trunk of the tree. This gives them the appearance of being wonderfully polite: they bow and courtesy to each other as if preparing for a grand quadrille; and they are decked out in gay colors, red and green, and yellow, and the margin of the little cup is beautifully fringed with cilia, which are in rapid motion, producing a current which brings their food to them.

But one of the most curious sights I ever beheld was a Cyclops, with a Tree Vorticella growing on its back. It was a larger tree than here represented, and a different species; the branches were more straight, and much more numerous. Only think of it, an animal swimming about with a great tree of living freight on its back! But



they did not seem to have much control over the Cyclops, for he dashed about as if he did not care how many he knocked overboard! But, alas! the poor Cyclops, with his strange freight, came to grief. I undertook to transfer him to the live-box, so that our artist might have him more under control, when I brought down the cover a little too close, crushing him in the operation. This sent the vorticellas flying off their stems, and all was spoiled.