margin. It is called _Cristatella_. At present there are only
three individuals in the outer heart-shaped covering, but additional
ones will bud out of these three, and others from these last, till the
whole colony may number as many as sixty individuals, being then fully
an inch long; the mouth of each is placed between the tentacles, which
have upon them, running down each side, a great number of very minute
hairs or _cilia_, to which, you may remember, I have alluded before.
The colour of the colony is yellowish white, sometimes brownish white.
It is a most exquisite little animal, or rather colony of animals;
for, though there are several creatures in one house, as it were, each
is separate and independent of its neighbour. You will often find
other forms of polyzoa in clear ponds and mill-pools; sometimes you
would suppose you were looking at a mass of sponge, as in the case of
_Alcyonella_, or the creeping root of some weed, as in _Plumatella_
and _Fredericella_; but when the sponge-like mass or rootlets are
placed in water you will observe numbers of little animals to show
their heads and tentacles above the mass or from the little holes in
the creeping rootlets. Ah! what have we here? Do you see those long
narrow ribbons of floating grass about a yard from us? Do you notice
some of the ribbons to be bent and folded here and there? Between each
fold we shall find an egg of a newt. Let me get this bit of grass
ribbon. There, I unfold it where it is creased, and you see a
transparent glairy substance, within which is a round yellowish egg.
Here again is another. The leaves of persicaria, also, are often
selected by the female newt for the purpose of depositing her eggs.
Here you see is a leaf folded up; between the folds is another newt's
egg. I have never seen the newt in the act of laying her eggs, but, I
believe, it may readily be observed by placing a female newt any time
during the months of May and June in a vessel of water with some
leaves of persicaria. Mr. Bell says, "The manner in which the eggs
are deposited is very interesting and curious. The female, selecting
some leaf of an aquatic plant, sits as it were upon its edge, and
folding it by means of her two hind feet, deposits a single egg in the
duplicature of the folded part of the leaf, which is thereby glued
most securely together, and the egg is thus effectually protected from
injury. As soon as the female has in this way deposited a single egg,
she