Lie down on
your face, and look down through two or three feet of water clear as
air into the water forest where the great trout feed.
Here; look into this opening in the milfoil and crowfoot bed. Do you
see a grey film around that sprig? Examine it through the pocket
lens. It is a forest of glass bells, on branching stalks. They are
Vorticellae; and every one of those bells, by the ciliary current on
its rim, is scavenging the water--till a tadpole comes by and
scavenges it. How many millions of living creatures are there on
that one sprig? Look here!--a brown polype, with long waving arms--a
gigantic monster, actually a full half-inch long. He is Hydra fusca,
most famous, and earliest described (I think by Trembley). Ere we go
home I may show you perhaps Hydra viridis, with long pea-green arms;
and rosea, most beautiful in form and colour of all the strange
family. You see that lump, just where his stalk joins his bell-head?
That is a budding baby. Ignorant of the joys and cares of wedlock,
he increases by gemmation. See! here is another, with a full-sized
young one growing on his back.
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