CHAPTER VII 



A LITTLE LESSON ABOUT LITTLE THINGS. MICROBES 



The dot at the end of this sentence is about as big as 

 a water flea looks when we see him without a microscope. 



He is indeed so small that when he 

 jerks along in the water we cannot be 

 sure that he has head, tail, or legs. In 

 fact, we hardly notice him at all unless he 

 moves. By looking at him through a mi- 

 croscope, however, we see that he is the 

 fine animal that the picture shows ; and 

 now we can study his wonderful swim- 

 ming legs, his queer tail, his rounded 

 head, and his long, jointed feelers that 

 reach around under his body. 



Evidently, although our eyes are 

 rather keen for some things, they can- 

 not see everything. There are millions upon millions of 

 tiny living creatures in the world that we cannot even 

 catch a glimpse of without a magnifying glass. 



Some of them are plants, some are animals, and we 

 know most of them by what they do. They are so small 



that the water flea must look like a fearful giant to them, 



29 



A WATER FLEA 

 Greatly magnified 



