4 THE COURTSHIP OF ANIMALS 



high power of the microscope. It has neither mouth nor 

 organs of digestion, no visible means of locomotion are 

 traceable, and the special senses of sight and hearing are 

 wanting ; but taste and smell, of a nebulous kind, are 

 there. Shape it cannot be said to have, for its bodily- 

 outline is constantly changing, thereby it moves. A 

 long tongue of its jelly-like substance, or " protoplasm " 

 as it is called, is thrust forwards, and the rest of the body 

 is, as it were, dragged after it. Whatever animal, or 

 vegetable, matter it passes over, in the course of its 

 wanderings, is drawn up into the semi-fluid substance of this 

 diaphanous body, and its juices extracted, the undigest- 

 ible residue is left behind in the course of the morning's 

 walk ! In due time it becomes adult ; further growth 

 is impossible. When this stage is attained a strange thing 

 happens. A certain minute, more soHd portion of this 

 body, which lies in the very centre of the mass and is 

 known as the " nucleus," begins to assume an hour- 

 glass shape. Speedily the constriction becomes apparent 

 across the whole body and rapidly increasing, cuts it in 

 two, as if by the tightening of some invisible thread. 

 Here Death is cheated, and records of births are unknown ! 

 And just as there are no parents so there are no children. 

 But a foreshadowing of what is to be occurs even here. 

 For every now and then two individuals, to all appear- 

 ances identical, meet and promptly begin to merge the 

 one into the other till they twain become one flesh in very 

 truth. Here is the most primitive form of marriage in 

 Nature. And here, in this union, or fusion, of separate 

 entities of Germ-plasm, we have the beginning of sex. 

 Such unions are common among these primeval forms 

 of life. In many cases this " marriage " takes place 

 between two particles of Protoplasm of which one is 



