Excerpt from The Rotifera, or Wheel-Animalcules, Both British and Foreign, Vol. 1 of 2: With Illustrations

Its slopes are covered with plantations of beech and fir, so as to shelter the pond on three sides, and yet leave it Open to the soft south-western breezes, and to the afternoon sun. At the head of the combe wells up a clear spring, which sends a thread of water, trickling through a bed of osiers, into the upper end of the pond. A stout stone wall has been drawn across the combe from side to side, so as to dam up the stream and there is a gap in one corner, through which the overflow finds its way, in a miniature cascade, down into the lower plantation.

The pond's smooth surface is prettily diapered with the green leaves of many a water-plant, and with the sharp images of three famous beeches growing close to its edge: but to a naturalist's eye the old wall is the more charming object. Time has crumbled away the mortar near the water's edge, and made a thousand nooks and crannies which, densely clothed with algae, are the haunts of myriads of living creatures.

If we approach the pond by the gamekeeper's path from the cottage above, we shall pass through the plantation, and come unseen right on to the corner of the wall; so that one quiet step will enable us to see at a glance its whole surface, without disturbing any living thing that may be there.

Far off at the upper end a water hen is leading her little brood among the willows on the fallen trunk of an old beech, lying half-way across the pond, a vole is sitting erect, rubbing his right ear and the splash of a beech husk just at our feet tells of a squirrel, who is dining somewhere in the leafy crown above us.

But see! The water rat has spied us out, and is making straight for his hole in the bank, while the ripple above him is the only thing that tells of his silent flight. The water hen has long ago got under cover, and the squirrel drops no more husks. It is a true Silent Pool, ' and without a sign of life.

But if, retaining sense and sight, we could shrink into living atoms and plunge under the water, of what a world of wonders should we then form part! We should find this fairy kingdom peopled with the strangest creatures -creatures that swim with their hair, that have ruby eyes blazing deep in their necks, with telescopic limbs that now are withdrawn wholly within their bodies and now stretched out to many times their own length. Here are some riding at anchor, moored by delicate threads spun out from their toes and there are others flashing by in glass armour, bristling with sharp spikes or ornamented with bosses and flowing curves; while, fastened to a green stem, is an animal convolvulus that by some invisible power draws a never-ceasing stream of victims into its gaping cup, and tears them to death with hooked jaws deep down within its body.

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