Animal Evolution. 185 



ally amoebae. They are all lumps of amorphous 

 protoplasm with a nucleus and nucleolus. They pro- 

 ject pseudopodia and wander about from place to 

 place. Haeckel has even seen the eggs of sponges 

 crawling about among the parent canals and cavities. 

 Reichenbach also observed the embryonic cells of the 

 cray-fish throw out pseudopodia and engulf the yolk 

 spheres provided them for nutriment. 



The microscope has revealed many strange pheno- 

 mena but few more astounding than this, that man's 

 body is filled with innumerable independent living 

 beings called the white corpuscles of the blood. To 

 all intents and purposes these organisms are separate 

 individuals, veritable amoebae, amorphous masses of 

 protoplasm, projecting and withdrawing pseudopodia, 

 creeping about from place to place, absorbing solid 

 food, and even bloodthirstily devouring their more 

 diminutive companions the red blood corpuscles. 

 When we are also told that no less than one hundred 

 and twenty species of animals are parasitic to humanity, 

 we begin to realise that man is not so much an indi- 

 vidual as a colony, or " cell-monarchy " as Haeckel 

 says, a veritable microscopic menagerie, the interests 

 of whose inhabitants are not always that of the host, 

 and whose triumph is his death. 



The Heliozoa class contains the sun-animalcula, 

 actinophrys, etc. The latter is a spheroid amoeba, 

 but instead of moving about it remains stationary, 

 spreads out numerous stiff isolated filamentous pseudo- 

 podia like a spider's web, paralyses small organisms 



