Slime- Animals. 35 



Like all living things, these M oners have a desire for 

 food, which their protoplasm first appropriates, then con- 

 verts into available material. They thus grow and increase 

 in size, but when they become too large to be comfortable 

 they usually split into two, in obedience to the law of their 

 being, and each half goes its own way as a living animal. This 

 is the earliest form of parentage, the simplest form of repro- 

 duction. Thus yielding to this necessity of a separation of 

 one into more than one, these Moners live on forever, or as 

 long as the earth continues to support life, thus becoming 

 immortal in the scientific sense in which the term is used to 

 devote a continuance of the physical life on earth. They 

 only and their nearest relatives, as simple in structure as 

 themselves, achieve this stupendous result, for in such a 

 division of their entire substance they know no loss, no 

 death of any part, violence only being able to sunder them 

 from life. They resolve themselves into their own off- 

 spring, and nothing perishes. 



