How Animals Work. 



Foram is engaged in the work of capturing food supplies, 

 while in the porcellanous type it is only the last-formed 

 segment that, issuing from the orifice of its chamber, 

 spreads its protoplasmic strands abroad for the capture 

 of food. 



In the third group (Arenaceous Foraminifera), where 

 the true shell is entirely replaced by a sandy envelope, 

 or " test," when we come to consider the primitive 

 form of life, a mere blob of protoplasmic jelly as it 

 were, which selects and collects the particles of sand 

 and builds them up into such graceful shapes, we can- 

 not but be filled with admiration and wonder. Indeed, 

 to quote the late Dr. Dallinger, who devoted many 

 years to the study of microscopic forms of life, " there 

 is nothing more wonderful in nature than the building 

 up of these elaborate and symmetrical structures by 

 mere ' jelly-specks/ presenting no trace whatever of 

 the definite 'organization* which we are accustomed to 

 regard as necessary to the manifestations of conscious 

 life. Suppose a human mason to be put down by the 

 side of a pile of stones of various shapes and sizes, and 

 to be told to build a dome of these, smooth on both 

 surfaces, without using more than the least possible 

 quantity of a very tenacious but costly cement in hold- 

 ing the stones together. If he accomplished this well, 

 he would receive credit for great intelligence and skill. 

 Yet this is exactly what these little ' jelly-specks ' do 

 on a most minute scale, the ' tests ' they construct, 

 when highly magnified, bearing comparison with the 

 most skilful masonry of man. From the same sandy 

 bottom one species picks up the coarser quartz grains, 

 unites them together with a ferruginous cement secreted 



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