194 FOOD AND FEEDING 



other. The dinner having been purely mutual, the result- 

 ing animal represented both the litigants equally ; just as, 

 in cannibal New Zealand, the chief who ate up his brother 

 chief was held naturally to inherit the goods and chattels 

 of the vanquished and absorbed rival, whom he had thus 

 literally and physically incorporated. 



A jelly-speck, floating about at his ease in a drop of 

 stagnant water under the field of a microscope, collides 

 accidentally with another jelly-speck who happens to be 

 travelling in the opposite direction across the same minia- 

 ture ocean. What thereupon occurs ? One jelly-speck 

 rolls itself gradually into the other, so that, instead of two, 

 there is now one ; and the united body proceeds to float 

 away quite unconcernedly, without waiting to trouble itself 

 for a second with the profound metaphysical question, 

 which half of it is the original personality, and which half 

 the devoured and digested. In these minute and very 

 simple animals there is absolutely no division of labour 

 between part and part ; every bit of the jelly-like mass is 

 alike head and foot and mouth and stomach. The jelly- 

 speck has no permanent limbs, but it keeps putting forth 

 vague arms and legs every now and then from one side or 

 the other ; and with these temporary and ever-dissolving 

 members it crawls along merrily through its tiny drop of 

 stagnant water. If two of the legs or arms happen to 

 knock up casually against one another, they coalesce at 

 once, just like two drops of water on a window-pane, or 

 two strings of treacle slowly spreading along the surface of 

 a plate. When the jelly-spteck meets any edible thing 

 a bit of dead plant, a wee creature like itself, a microscopic 

 egg it proceeds to fold its own substance slimily around 

 it, making, as it were, a temporary mouth for the purpose 

 of swallowing it, and a temporary stomach for the purpose 

 of quietly digesting and assimilating it afterwards. Thus 



