FLYING CRUSTACEANS.

Manawatu Herald, 1 February 1898, Page 4

FLYING CRUSTACEANS.

Tiny and Grotesqno Marine Creatures That Possess tho Tower of Flight. Aside from birds and insects, we are already acquainted with several animals which, owing to a special adaptness in one or another of their parts, are able to fly or afe least to maintain themselves in the air for a longer or shorter timo. Such creatures are bats and the flying squirrel among mammalia, tho flying lizard among reptiles, and the flying fish. All these belong to the vertebrata. Quito recently, howover, analogous oxamples have been brought to light among inverte-

bratea. Insects aro no longer the only known arthropods which have tho power of cleaving spaco and transporting themBelves through tho atmosphere. Tho snmo ability is found to be actually enjoyed by a crustacean, a very small ono at that, and reminding us neither in sizo nor shapo of the familiar lobster or crawfish. The facts in connection with this surprising discovery have been translated from the French by Popular Scienco News and are as follows: Dr. Ostrooumoff, director of tho biological station at Sevastopol, was on a boating excursion last summer along the shores of tho Crimea. One morning, the sea being quite calm and tho sky of that deep bluo only seen in southern latitudes, ho perceived vast numbers of diminutive objects flying in clouds, like gnats, above the surfaco of the water. Drawing nearer to tho phenomenon, the naturalist was able to observe it at his leisure, and this is what he saw: Each one of the tiny beings first poised itself for a moment on the surface, as if to gather strength, then leaped up, described a long and gentle curve in the air and ended the movement by falling back into the liquid element. Some of the animals being quickly caught and placed under a microscope, M. Ostrooomofl wns astonished at finding that they were simply crustaceans, such as are quito common in tho Black . sea, belonging to the species Pontellina mediterranea. Some of the email crustaceans, when microscopically examined, present a decide edly grotesque appearance. Calacolanus pavo, for example, which abounds in. tho Mediterranean, has a transparent body, with eight feathers of a gold yellow color placed symmetrically at the extremity of the abdomen (Fig. 1). Another copepod crustacean possesses similar appendages, but much' more developed. This is Copilia vitrea (Fig. 3), a

queer looking little being, also with a transparent' body and displaying on eaoh limb a feather ton of a brick red color. The discovery of this power of flight as possessed by crustaceans furnishes on- additional proof that nature sometimes attains a given end through on infinite variety of processes. Who can say that man, by imitating natural processes, may not one day find a method of overcoming certain kinds of obstructions, such as water courses, ditches and wells, by raising himself in the air and remaining there for a sufficient length of time?