34 Life and Immortality. 
PROTOMYXA FEEDING. 
course to and fro. For five or six hours the little fellow 
hugs closely round the prey until it has become thoroughly 
absorbed, at least the nutritious parts, into its body-mass, 
when it draws itself away, or back into its original place, 
leaving by its side the skeleton of its late victim. Without 
eyes or ears or parts of any kind it knows how to find its 
food ; without muscles or limbs it is able to seize it ; without 
a mouth it can suck out its living body, and without a 
stomach it can digest the food in the midst of its own slime, 
and cast out the parts for which it has no use. 
When Protomyxa has become a burden to itself it divides 
itself by a simple process of fission, each part being complete 
in itself, or it assumes a thick covering, becoming encysted, 
as itis termed. Ina little while the enclosed mass divides 
into spheres, the cell-wall bursts, and the little spheres, which 
have now taken on a sort of tadpole shape, float out upon 
the water, where they soon assume the parent-form. 
