Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20): Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky
Science
Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20): Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky
Science -- Juvenile literature
Come and look at it. It is a horny-branched stem with a double row of
tiny cups all along each side. Out of these cups there appear a row of
tiny cups all along each side (see Fig. 5), Out of these cups there
appear from time to time sixteen minute transparent tentacles as fine
as spun glass, which wave about in the water. If you shake the glass a
little, in an instant each crystal star vanishes into its cup, to come
out again a few minutes later; so that now here, now there, the
delicate animal-flowers spread out on each side of the stem, and the
tree is covered with moving beings. These tentacles are feelers, which
lash food into a mouth and stomach in each cup, where it is digested
and passed, through a hole in the bottom, along a jelly thread which
runs down the stem and joins all the mouths together. In this way the
food is distributed all over the tree, which is, in fact, one animal
with many feeding-cups. Some day I will show you one of these cups
with the tentacles stretched out and mounted on a slide, so that you
can examine a tentacle with a very strong magnifying power. You will
then see that it is dotted over with cells, in which are coiled fine
threads. The animal uses these threads to paralyze the creatures on
which it feeds, for at the base of each thread there is a poison
gland.
In the larger Sertularia the whole branched tree is connected by jelly
threads, running through the stem, and all the thousands of mouths are
spread out in the water. One large form called _Sertularia cupressina_
grows sometimes three feet high and bears as many as a hundred
thousand cups, with living mouths, on its branches.
The next of my minute friends I can only show to the class in a
diagram, but you will see it under the fourth microscope by and by. I
had great trouble in finding it yesterday, though I know its haunts
upon the green weed, for it is so minute and transparent that even
when the weed is in a trough a magnifying-glass will scarcely detect
it. And I must warn you that if you want to know any of the minute
creatures we are studying, you must visit one place constantly. You
may in a casual way find many of them on seaweed, or in the damp ooze
and mud, but it will be by chance only; to look for them with any
certainty you must take trouble in making their acquaintance.
[Illustration: FIG. 6. _Thuricolla folliculata_ and _Chilomonas
amygdalum_. (_Saville Kent_.)
1, _Thuricolla_ erect. 2, Retracted. 3, Dividing. 4, _Chilomonas
amygdalum. hc,_ Horny carapace, _cv_, Contractile vesicle. _v_ Closing
valves.]
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