The Stylonichia are oval animalcules, surrounded by cilia, and having moreover a collection of styles, both straight and curved, the latter called _uncini_, or little hooks. They swim steadily on, and then dart back, but not so far as they have advanced, and may be seen to keep up this fidgety motion by the hour together. Pritchard tells us Ehrenberg found that a single animalcule lived nine days; during the first twenty-four hours it was developed by transverse self-division into three animals; these in twenty-four hours formed two each in the same manner, so that by self-division only (without ova), these animalcules increased three or four-fold in twenty-four hours, and _may thus produce a million_ from a single _animalcule in ten days_. Such are the amazing powers of reproduction conferred upon these humble creatures, powers which are fully employed when the surrounding circumstances are favorable, and which, in the aggregate, change the condition of large masses of matter, and bring within the circle of life millions upon millions of particles every minute of the day. 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 Parasitic Epistylis like the "Old Man of the Sea"--Halteria and its Leaps--Aspidisca Lynceus.