284 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 



says, like the beginning of a " social instinct." We 

 make no apology for quoting these details, for the 

 discoveries are of high importance, increasing our 

 appreciation of the subtlety of living organisms 

 even in their relatively simple unicellular expression. 

 As we have noted, recourse must be had to tough- 

 minded and skeptical experiment (and happily it is 

 not difficult to keep Foraminifera alive in artificial 

 conditions), but it seems at present that we must 

 attribute to creatures at the level of the Protozoa 

 some of that skil fulness in the use of materials 

 which we are familiar with at higher reaches of the 

 p.nimal kingdom among the tube-building worms, 

 the tailor-crabs, the hive-bees, the trap-door and 

 web-spinning spiders, and so on up to the nest- 

 building birds. Just as we have rational skill and 

 intelligent skill and instinctive skill, so perhaps we 

 have in these Foraminifera organic skill, when the 

 simple individuality, pulling itself together, acts as 

 a unity and then perhaps feels itself as one. For 

 it is not fantastic to suppose that in such critical 

 moments of endeavor and adventure consciousness 

 first found, and still finds, its simplest glimmering 

 expression. Perhaps we are nearer the truth in sup- 

 posing that Technitella says to itself in a quiet 

 way of its own, " Anch'io sono pittore," than in 

 supposing that its artifice is describable in terms of 

 surface-tension. Those interested in these deep 

 problems will watch with interest the progress of 

 Mr. Heron-Allen's and Mr. Earland's investigations 

 in continuance of those of which we have here 



