358 THE BIOLOGY OF THE SEASONS 



animals who people that dark, cold, silent, eternally calm 

 world which we call abyssal. But so far as we know, these 

 sinking atomies have all been killed ; they are subject to 

 violent or environmental death, but not to natural death. 



It may be noted, in passing, that many of the Protozoa 

 are but little troubled by bacterial or microbic infection, 

 which is so fatal to higher forms. Metchnikoff has shown 

 that Amoebae, for instance, are able to engulf and digest 

 various kinds of very virulent microbes, just as the wander- 

 ing amoeboid cells or phagocytes of higher animals (and 

 our own indispensable bodyguard) are able to do. To 

 certain minute parasites, however, even the Amoebae 

 succumb. 



How is it, then, that these simple pioneer organisms 

 escape natural death ? The presumably true answer is 

 twofold : that being relatively very simple, in a sense 

 without a body, they are able to sustain with persistent 

 success the vital equation between waste and repair ; 

 and that their common mode of multiplying (by dividing 

 into two or more units) is inexpensive and not attended 

 with any loss of life. On the one hand, we reach the idea 

 that death was " the price paid for a body " ; on the other 

 hand, we see that in the simplest forms of life immortality 

 has not yet been pawned for love. 



In many living creatures the giving origin to new lives 

 is the beginning of death. The annual plant dies as its 

 seeds are scattered. Many a worm, many an insect, never 

 survives the climax in which it gives origin to others like 

 itself. ' ' Quasi cursores lampada t radunt , ' ' and as the torch 

 is handed on to another, the runner falls and dies. Even 

 among backboned animals, cases are known, e.g. of 

 lampreys and eels, in which the parents collapse and die 

 after reproduction. The little fish Aphia pellucida is like 

 an annual among plants, it lasts only for a year. Repro- 



