Slime-Animals. 33 
touch it, feels for its food, and moves from place to place, 
changing its shape to form limbs and feeling-threads, which 
are let into the general organism when they have served the 
purpose of their existing, only to be succeeded by others as 
short-lived as themselves when necessity requires their 
development. 
So small are these creatures that the largest specimen will 
be found to be smaller than the smallest pin’s head. Examine 
how we will, there will be found no mouth, no stomach, no 
muscles, no nerves, no parts of any kind. The animal looks 
merely like a minute drop of gum with fine grains diffused 
throughout, floating in the water, some times with out- 
stretched arms, and at other times asa simple drop. An 
analysis of the matter of which it is composed shows it to 
be much the same as a speck of white-of-egg. Yet it is alive, 
for it breathes. Kept in a drop of water, it uses up the . 
oxygen it contains, and renders the water foul by the carbonic 
acid it breathes out. The arms, so necessary in the procure- 
ment of food, can be drawn in and thrown out when and 
where the animal chooses, showing that some option is 
undoubtedly exercised in the matter. Minute jelly-plants, 
that live in the water, and even higher animals than itself, 
constitute its food. The presence of an animal with a shell 
does not deter it from attack, for it is just as able to deal with 
it as with the softer, shell-less kinds, sucking their jelly-like 
contents, and discarding the empty, innutritious shells. 
Quite as interesting among the Moners, to which the Finger 
Slime belongs, is the Protomyxa aurantiaca, a shapeless bit 
of transparent matter, containing merely circulating granules. 
Locomotion is effected by extending the body into pseudo- 
podia, or false feet, and contracting them. Its movement 
is slow and gliding. When at rest it appears as a mere lump 
of jelly, but its whole demeanor changes when in the pres- 
ence of a living animal suited for food. Fine threads imme- 
diately begin to shoot out from all sides, which fuse about 
the unsuspecting prey, while all the little grains in the slime 
