68 LIFE AND HABIT. 



and thus constructs a flask-shaped ' test/ having a 

 short neck and a large single orifice. Another picks up 

 the finest grains, and puts them together, with the 

 same cement, into perfectly spherical 'tests' of the 

 most extraordinary finish, perforated with numerous 

 small pores disposed at pretty regular intervals. An- 

 other selects the minutest sand grains and the termi- 

 nal portions of sponge spicules, and works them up 

 together — apparently with no cement at all, by the 

 mere laying of the spicules — into perfect white 

 spheres, like homo2opathic globules, each having a 

 single-fissured orifice. And another, which makes a 

 straight, many-chambered ' test/ that resembles in 

 form the chambered shell of an orthoceratite — the 

 conical mouth of each chamber projecting into the 

 cavity of the next — while forming the walls of its 

 chambers of ordinary sand grains rather loosely held 

 together, shapes the conical mouth of the successive 

 chambers by firmly cementing together grains of ferru- 

 ginous quartz, which it must have picked out from the 

 general mass." 



"To give these actions," continues Dr. Carpenter, 

 " the vague designation of ' instinctive ' does not in the 

 least help us to account for them, since what we want 

 is to discover the mechanism by which they are worked 

 out; and it is most difficult to conceive how so 

 artificial a selection can be made by a creature so 

 simple " (Mental Physiology, 4th ed., pp. 41--43). 



This is what protoplasm can do when it has the 

 talisman of faith — of faith which worketh all wonders, 

 either in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, 



