THE HAUNTS OF LIFE 107 



Adaptations. Many freshwater animals run the risk 

 of being periodically dried up, and there is a series of 

 remarkable adaptations to meet this vicissitude. Many 

 are able to survive prolonged desiccation. They are 

 masters of the art of ' lying low and saying nothing ', as 

 Brer Rabbit phrased it. The capacity is illustrated by 

 some Protozoa, Nematodes, Rotifers, Bear-Animalcules, 

 Entomostracan Crustaceans, and Mites, but in some cases 

 what survives is not the animal itself but an enclosed egg 

 or germ. 



Writing in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History 

 in 1898, Mr. Atkinson noted that forty years before he had 

 taken some samples of mud from the ancient pool of Gihon, 

 outside the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem, which at that time 

 contained water for only two months of the year. The 

 dry mud was sent to England and moistened, with the 

 result that Dr. Baird found in the culture six new species 

 of living Entomostraca or water-fleas. For eight years in 

 succession, at the Leeds Philosophical Society's Museum, 

 the mud was dried up in summer and moistened again in 

 spring, and its tenants still persisted. Not that any one 

 individual was known to persist, but multiplication in 

 summer always provided individuals or resting eggs to 

 carry on the torch for another period. In one case, a small 

 sample was left dry in a pill box for nine years, and then 

 moistened, with the result that in a fortnight a single 

 specimen of Estheria gihoni made its appearance. Here 

 the torch was kept burning, either by an individual or more 

 probably by a resting egg, throughout the desiccation of 

 nine years. In another case, the alternation of drought 

 and moisture was kept up artificially for twenty-four years, 

 with unvarying success as regarded persistence of vitality. 



