He is always a great favorite with those who have watched him through the microscope. I do not know how long they live, but I have kept the same individuals three months or more. I think no one knows the entire life-history of any of these little creatures, so here is a grand chance for any young microscopist to investigate and become famous. On the left of the brickmaker in our field of view is a delicate, beautiful plant. Only a small part of it is seen in the engraving. It has a long, floating stem, thickly set with rosettes of a pearly green color. To the naked eye it looks like green slime, and is called "frog's spawn;" but the microscope shows us that it is a lovely plant, and some wise man has given us a long fine name to call it by if we choose--_Batrachospermum moniliform_. Let us see if this long name has any meaning: _Batrachia_, a frog, _spermum_, spawn; ah, after all, only another name for frog spawn! The other name, _moniliform_, means a bead-like necklace; and this was given it because the threads that make the rosettes look like strings of small pearly-green beads. All of the strange-looking plants and animals that we see in the microscope are known as well by sight and by name by those who make them a study, as are the larger animals and plants that we see around us every day. A bright little girl once asked me why such long hard names are given to everything in nature. We told her if there was but one language spoken in the world there would be no need of using Latin names. But as there are many languages, it was found necessary to agree upon some system, so that all peoples of different nations might have the same name for an animal or plant, and a long time ago all the civilized world agreed to use Latin names. Thus our little brickmaker is known all over the world as _Melicerta ringens_. "A field of view" depends for its interest and variety upon what kind of water we put under the microscope. In the one here represented, I first took a tiny spray of plant with a brickmaker's house attached, and laid it on the hollow glass slide and then used the dipping-tube and brought up some of the sediment from the bottom of the bottle; this proved to contain several singular-looking plants and animals shown here. _Figures_ 3, 4, 5 and 6, are diatoms, and _figures_ 7 and 8 are desmids. Naturalists formerly placed both diatoms and desmids in the animal kingdom, but now all agree that the desmids are plants, while some few still maintain that the diatoms are animals. But the weight of evidence is on the plant side of the question. The desmids are wonderfully beautiful plants; the markings and colors are exquisite. A number of species are found in the sediment of every swamp and pond.