34 THE MICROSCOPE. ‘ie 
the silicious spines snapped and flew. If the scene was exciting to 
the spectator, what must it have been to the Acanthocystis, with that 
jumping Jonah leaping among its vitals? It was no joke to either 
party. A struggle for life was going on under my very eyes. The 
rhizopod, with every particle of its jelly-mass surrounding the rotifer 
possessing digestive power, seemed calm, perhaps with the calmness 
of despair, but the rotifer—O how she plunged! not a moment did 
she rest, not a muscle did she leave unused, not a manoeuvre un- 
tried. The situation appeared a bad one for that rotifer since she 
bade fair to be digested. She stretched herself and forced out the 
spinous armor until it seemed on the point of rupture; the 
Acanthocystis simply flattened the opposite side and waited, digest- 
ing. The rotifer leaped, she turned, she pushed with her two sharp 
toes against the wall; the rhizopod rolled over the field, the spines 
were loosened and fell off, yet that rotifer remained in the corner 
where she first appeared, pressed down by the Acanihocystis’ body 
mass, although her efforts were continually nothing less than 
frantic. For six hours the struggle lasted; from fourteen to twenty 
o’clock these microscopic creatures were under uninterrupted obser- 
vation. Finally, after a short rest on the rotifer’s part, there oc- 
curred one of the most amusing exhibitions of intelligence in these 
lowly organisms that I have ever seen. It was indeed a masterly 
piece of strategy. Zhe rotifer began to eat! Protoplasmic jelly, 
chlorophyll corpuscles, half-digested food-particles, everything the 
Acanthocystis contained streamed down into that rotifer’s trans- 
parent stomach. With short intervals, which she improved by but- 
ting against the wall, she ate until she arrived at the central nucleus 
when, apparently perceiving that her object was accomplished, she 
stopped. And then—it really did seem as if she was celebrating her 
victory—then she laid an egg! 
The rhizopod once dead and half empty, the brave rotifer 
selected the spot at which she intended to leave, and left. It is a 
curious fact that, having chosen the place for exit, she continued to 
beat against that point only, until the basal plates were forced 
aside, and she was free. Circling once or twice around the dead 
Acanthocystis she darted from the field followed by applause, 
and a few remarks of approval, from the spectator. 
By twenty-four o’clock the ovum that had been extruded in my 
presence as well as in prison, which I had seen rolling down the half 
