Slime- A nimals. 3 3 



touch it, feels for its food, and moves from place to place, 

 changing its shape to form limbs and feeling-threads, which 

 are let into the general organism when they have served the 

 purpose of their existing, only to be succeeded by others as 

 short-lived as themselves when necessity requires their 

 development. 



So small are these creatures that the largest specimen will 

 be found to be smaller than the smallest pin's head. Examine 

 how we will, there will be found no mouth, no stomach, no 

 muscles, no nerves, no parts of any kind. The animal looks 

 merely like a minute drop of gum with fine grains diffused 

 throughout, floating in the water, some times' with out- 

 stretched arms, and at other times as a simple drop. An 

 analysis of the matter of which it is composed shows it to 

 be much the same as a speck of white-of-egg. Yet it is alive, 

 for it breathes. Kept in a drop of water, it uses up the 

 oxygen it contains, and renders the water foul by the carbonic 

 acid it breathes out. The arms, so necessary in the procure- 

 ment of food, can be drawn in and thrown out when and 

 where the animal chooses, showing that some option is 

 undoubtedly exercised in the matter. Minute jelly-plants, 

 that live in the water, and even higher animals than itself, 

 constitute its food. The presence of an animal with a shell 

 does not deter it from attack, for it is just as able to deal with 

 it as with the softer, shell-less kinds, sucking their jelly-like 

 contents, and discarding the empty, innutritious shells. 



Quite as interesting among the Moners, to which the Finger 

 Slime belongs, is the Protomyxa aurantiaca, a shapeless bit 

 of transparent matter, containing merely circulating granules. 

 Locomotion is effected by extending the body into pseudo- 

 podia, or false feet, and contracting them. Its movement 

 is slow and gliding. When at rest it appears as a mere lump 

 of jelly, but its whole demeanor changes when in the pres- 

 ence of a living animal suited for food. Fine threads imme- 

 diately begin to shoot out from all sides, which fuse about 

 the unsuspecting prey, while all the little grains in the slime 



