WATER-BEARS AND ROTIFERS. 93 



this world. It will thrive upon food when it can 

 get it, or do without it for an unlimited period. 

 The kind of food is also a matter of supreme in- 

 difference to it, for it will either live on the juices 

 of other creatures or among the debris of de- 

 caying animal and vegetable matter. Pure or 

 dirty water comes alike to the Water-bear, or 

 it will do without either, and grub among damp 

 mosses for a livelihood , and, in the absence of 

 even these, it quietly rolls itself up in its own skin 

 and passes on the wings of the wind whithersoever 

 it listeth. Though of relatively high organisation, 

 it yet can do without a mate for the continuance of 

 offspring ; and these when they come give him 

 neither care nor trouble, being, as we have seen, 

 simply folded up in their parents' cast-off coats and 

 left to shift for themselves. This is just such a 

 creature as to stand the " wreck of matter and the 

 crash of worlds," and almost answers the desider- 

 atum of some scientists for a creature that would 

 bear the physical force of transference from one 

 globe to another wrapped up in some form of 

 mineral matter. 



