THE MICROSCOPIST IN BERMUDA. 119 



gathering of that tide, fresh from the ocean and all cleaned and 

 whitened. If you get there before the wind has blown away the 

 lighter materials, and carefully scrape it together and bag it, you 

 have the best samples which can be obtained. 



Having studied thus far the problem of Bermuda, I w r as now 

 even more anxious than ever to know the names and the life- 

 history of the minute creatures which had built up, with the 

 clothing of their bodies, a beautiful island, with its mass of roll- 

 ing hills. By far the largest portion of the shells in the sand, I 

 found to belong to the order called Foraminifera. Foramen is 

 the Latin for a small apperture ; and as you will see from the 

 specimens shown to you later this evening, these shells are 

 pierced with innumerable little holes, some of them not larger 

 than the ten thousandth of an inch. But through these holes, 

 no matter how small they may be, the animal pushes out parts of 

 its body in minute threads, which may extend to several times 

 its own length. These filaments, or pseudopodia as they are 

 called, are both feeding arms, and means of locomotion. They 

 feel around for food, and finding it, bring it by their natural ad- 

 hesiveness up to the body and into the hole in the shell if this be 

 large enough, or if not they envelop and digest the morsel out- 

 side. It makes little difference to this most simple of all living 

 creatures w T here it takes in, or where it assimilates, the food 

 which supports it. For its whole body is nothing in the world 

 but a little albuminoid substance, just like the white of an egg, 

 nothing more. There are absolutely no parts, no organs, about 

 the creature at all. It seizes its food without members, swallows 

 it without a mouth, digests it without a stomach, and sends the 

 nourishment of it to the most distant parts without a circulating 

 system. It moves from place to place without muscles, feels 

 without nerves, propagates without organs, and builds an ex- 

 quisitely beautiful house without a vestige of the senses. 



I have taken these tiny specimens alive from the sea-weed at 

 the bottom of the shallow bays, and placed them in sea-water in 

 small vials. After a time I have seen them climbing the sides of 

 the vial with a perfect forest of little threads thrown out from 

 their margins. They had evidently realized that they were de- 



