CHAPTER XV 

 The Building Rotifer 



IT is said that if we take the largest of land 

 animals, the elephant, and the smallest of living 

 creatures ever viewed with a powerful microscope, 

 the creature which occupies the midway position 

 between the two extremes is the house-fly. Imagine, 

 if you can, creatures as much smaller than the house- 

 fly as the house-fly is smaller than the elephant. It 

 may be possible for the mind to picture such crea- 

 tures, but what mind can understand the complex 

 laws which regulate and control their existence ? 

 We frequently express the limit of our seeing powers 

 when we say this or that object is as small as the 

 dust in the sunbeam, but there are exquisite specimens 

 of the hidden beauties of Nature much smaller than 

 the dust. 



It would sound like the language of romantic 

 exaggeration if we were to say that a beautiful 

 house built with bricks exists, which is so small 

 that it would readily drop through the eye of the 

 smallest needle used in sewing. Yet such is the fact 



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