140 Transactions of the Society. 



plasniic substance being endowed in a low degree with that power 

 of receiving, conducting, and acting upon external impressions 

 wdiich is raised to a much more exalted degree when limited or 

 specialized in the nervous system." I have always endeavoured 

 to point out that it is, in my opinion, only to a degree appropriate 

 to their organization, and not in its entirety, that the behaviour 

 of the Ehizopoda is comparable with that of man. 



I do not wish to convey the notion " that we know more about 

 the activities of the Protozoa than v:e do," but I do wish to convey 

 that we know more than we did, and that in time we shall know 

 a great deal more. My critic admits that "it is not difficult to 

 conceive of the existence of a mechanism in the protoplasm of the 

 Protozoa, comparable to that mechanism which is assumed to 

 exist in the nervous system of insects and other animals," and I 

 do not seek to put the matter higher than that, but I do join 

 issue with him when he refers these phenomena to " the age-long 

 action of Natural Selection and the survival of those individuals 

 possessing qualities or ' tricks ' of life-saving value," for, among 

 the Foraminifera, the individuals which I have chosen to illustrate 

 my views are not the general mass of the survivors — they consti- 

 tute an infinitesimal, and, if I may dare to say so, a progressive 

 minority. That they may ow^e their capacity of progressiveness 

 (or of " " self-expressing experimentation," as Professor J. Arthur 

 Thomson would say), to the elimination of dull and irresponsive 

 ancestors, I do not for a moment dispute. 



I am not arguing for the possession of " high " skeletal struc- 

 ture, or mental activities in the Protozoa — it is obvious that these 

 must be as rudimentary as they are in any egg — but in that 

 rudimentary condition it seems to me that they must be there, 

 awaiting the stimulus that calls them into action. Long before 

 Carpenter wrote, no less an authority than Albert Gaudry spoke of 

 " the ray of intellectual light which the Author of Nature has 

 allotted to the most humble creatures." * 



I cannot conclude in words more satisfactory to myself than in 

 Sir Eay Lankester's own, when he says: — "Descending step by 

 step we shall arrive at the conception of the microscopic mentality 

 of a Foraminifer" ; and I wholly dismiss the notion of attributing 

 to it " Purpose " and " Intelligence," as these terms are defined 

 in the Oxford Dictionary. 



* The passage is worth quoting. He says : "Pour connaitre les animaux il ne 

 suf&t pas d'etudier leurs caracteres ext6rieurs ou auatomiques, il faut assister a leur 

 vie, surprendre leurs moeurs, d6couvrir leur instinct, ce rayon de lumiere intelleo- 

 tuelle que I'Auteur de la nature a distribue aux creatures les plus humbles." — 

 A. Gaudry, in " Revue des Deux Mondes," xix. (1859) p. 818. 



