BEFORE THE DAWN OF ART 285 



given some indication. It is difficult indeed to 

 break off. How extraordinarily quaint, for instance, 

 it is to read of the probability at least that Saccam- 

 mina now and then breaks down its barns to build 

 greater, " re-dissolving the cement with which its 

 house is built, with a view to increasing its size 

 by the interstitial addition from within of stored 

 material " ! How we are made to think by the 

 story of Marsipella spiralis, which arranges its 

 borrowed sponge-spicules in a left-handed spiral 

 and embeds them firmly in cement, thus improv- 

 ing on the shell of its neighbor-species Marsipella 

 cylindrica, which forms a long and exceedingly 

 friable tube ! " It would appear that a long series 

 of generations of Marsipella cylindrica having 

 suffered from this extreme friability, it was left for 

 "Marsipella spiralis to make the same great discovery 

 as did the prehistoric genius who invented string 

 it has clearly realized that a twisted yarn is stronger \ 

 than an untwisted wisp of fiber." This description 

 is indeed rather more anthropomorphic in phrase- 

 ology than we care for, but we venture to think that 

 it errs on the right side. Claparede and Lachmann, 

 writing in 1858 (when the Origin of Species was 

 published), spoke of the "absurdity" of supposing 

 that the complicated shell of a Foraminifer could be 

 secreted by " an amorphous and scarcely organized 

 mass of jelly." ' The animal cannot be just a mass 

 of sarcode." Something is now known in regard to 

 the intricacy of protoplasmic organization, but we, 

 speaking for ourselves, would still say : " The 



