SLIME-ANIMALS. 
OSSIBLY the simplest of life’s children are the singu- 
larly unique and structureless little Finger Slimes, 
which live not only in the sea but also in puddles and pools, 
and in the gutters of our streets and of our house-tops. 
Anywhere that stagnant water abounds these tiny drops of 
slime will grow up and make it their home. Sometimes few 
and far between, and sometimes in such immense crowds 
that the entire pond would seem, if they could be seen 
with the unaided vision, literally alive with them, they live, 
and multiply and die under our very feet. 
Nothing can be less animal-like than one of these shapeless 
masses of pure protoplasm, yet under a microscope of strong 
power it may be seen moving lazily along by pulling out a 
thick finger of slime and then letting all the rest of its body 
flow after it. When coming into contact with food it may 
be said to flow over it, dissolving the soft parts and sending 
out the hard, indigestible refuse anywhere, no matter where, 
for its body is devoid of skin, being merely one general mass 
of homogeneous slime. 
But what can these little slime specks tell us about the 
wonderful powers of life? Nothing at all, it would seem, 
for in these tiny creatures life has nothing better to work 
with than a mere drop of living matter, which is all alike 
throughout, so that if broken into a hundred pieces every 
piece would be as much a living being as the whole. And 
yet by means of the wonderful gift of life, with which the 
all-wise Omnipotence has endowed it, this slime-drop lives, 
and breathes, and eats, and increases, shrinks away when you 
