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CHAPTER I. 



Omnipresence of Life. The Microscope. An Opalina and its 

 Wonders. The Uses of Cilia. How our Lungs are protected 

 from Dust and Filings. Feeding without a Mouth or Stomach. 

 What is an Organ? How a complex Organism arises. 

 Early Stages of a Frog and a Philosopher. How the Plants 

 feed. Parasites of the Frog. Metamorphoses and Migrations 

 of Parasites. Life within Life. The budding of Animals. 

 A steady Bore. Philosophy of the infinitely little. 



COME with me, and lovingly study Nature, as she 

 breathes, palpitates, and works under myriad forms 

 of Life forms unseen, unsuspected, or unheeded 

 by the mass of ordinary men. Our course may be 

 through park and meadow, garden and lane, over 

 the swelling hills and spacious heaths, beside the 

 running and sequestered streams, along the tawny 

 coast, out on the dark and dangerous reefs, or under 

 dripping caves and slippery ledges. It matters lit- 

 tle where we go: every where in the air above, 

 the earth beneath, and waters under the earth we 

 are surrounded with Jjife. Avert your eyes a while 

 from our human world, with its ceaseless anxieties, 

 its noble sorrow, poignant, yet sublime, of conscious 

 imperfection aspiring to higher states, and contem- 

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