OMNIPRESENCE OF LIFE 1295 



d osmosis; it there serves as food; and the refuse 

 passes out again by a similar process, called exosmo- 

 sis. This is the way in which many animals and all 

 plants are nourished. The cell at the end of a root- 

 let, which the plant sends burrowing through the 

 earth, has no mouth to seize, no open pores to admit 

 the liquid that it needs; nevertheless, the liquid 

 passes into the cell through its delicate cell-wall, and 

 passes from this cell to other cells upward from 

 the rootlet to the bud. It is in this way, also, that 

 the Opalina feeds: it is all-mouth, no-mouth; all- 

 stomach, no-stomach. Every part of its body per- 

 forms the functions which in more complex animals 

 are performed by organs specially set apart. It feeds 

 without mouth, breathes without lungs, and moves 

 without muscles. The Opalina, as I have said, is 

 a parasite. It may be found in various animals, and 

 almost always in the frog. 



Nature is economic as well as prodigal of space. 

 She fills the illimitable heavens with planetary and 

 starry grandeurs, and the tiny atoms moving over 

 the crust of earth she makes the homes of the in- 

 finitely little. Far as the mightiest telescope can 

 reach, it detects worlds in clusters, like pebbles on 

 the shore of infinitude; deep as the microscope can 

 penetrate, it detects life within life, generation within 

 generation, as if the very universe itself were not vast 

 enough for the energies of life! 



