Page:Hardwicke's Science-Gossip - Volume 1.pdf/296

The same writer says that he has not unfrequently killed Pike with a fly on bright clear days, when spinning was utterly useless. As a rule, Pike-flies cannot well be to gaudy, though they may easily be too big. The bodies should be fat and rough, made of coloured pigs' wool, cocks' hackles, &c., and plentifully bedizened with beads and tinsels; the wings of two peacocks' moon-feathers (tail-feathers with eyes in them).

"In the western lakes of Ireland, patterns dressed with sable or other furs and without wings, are more in favour. Ephemera thinks the Pike-fly is looked upon by the Pike as a gigantic Dragon-fly; but that it is mistaken for a Yellow-hammer, or, perhaps, for a Swallow, appears to me to be the more probable hypothesis. Indeed, a Yellow-hammer or other small bright bird dragged along the surface of the water, is quite as good a bait as the regular Pike-fly, if not better. According to an excellent trolling authority, much may be done in Ireland by trailing the tuft of the end of a calf's tail well armed with hooks. The engraving is taken from a very fine specimen of the Pike-fly, as used in Ireland, and was presented to me by Mr. Martin Kelly, of Dublin. Any combination, however, of feathers and tinsel, which is bright and big, would probably answer the purpose equally well; indeed, even the size seems to be doubtful, as I have twice caught Pike with Chub-flies; and Stoddart says, that in Loch Ledgowan, Pike are fished for with flies 'dark in colour, and resembling those used in many rivers for summer Grilse.'

Mr. Pennell's treatise is well worthy of the attention of Pike-fishers, as it contains, besides a very large personal experience, the results of the opinion of all the leading authorities on the subject.

The accompanying figures represent one of the Volvocineæ, apparently that form of Pandorina morum referred to in the Micrographic Dictionary,^[1] "with sixteen or thirty-two gonidia closely crowded together, instead of standing at wide intervals in the large colourless envelope: it is uncertain whether this form is multiplied vegetatively; but we have seen its gonidia all converted into resting spores."

What I have noticed with respect to this plant seems to prove that it is "multiplied vegetatively."

In its usual condition the number of gonidia is sixteen (figs. 4, 6, 9), though there are frequently only twelve (figs. 1, 2, 3). These are enclosed in a thick gelatinous envelope, through the walls of which pass two cilia from each gonidium, by means of which pass two cilia from each gonidium, by means of which these plants move rapidly with a rotatory motion. The gonidia seem to have the power of altering their shape spontaneously, being sometimes pear-shaped (fig. 1), at others inversely pear-shaped (fig. 2). Each has a vacuole at the end, from which the cilia spring; and, very frequently, if not always, a red spot near. Sometimes the envelope has a striated appearance, (fig. 3), as if the substance had become