284 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 
says, like the beginning of a “ social instinct.” We 
make no apology for quoting these details, for the 
discoveries are of high importance, increasing our 
appreciation of the subtlety of living organisms 
even in their relatively simple unicellular expression. 
As we have noted, recourse must be had to tough- 
minded and skeptical experiment (and happily it is 
not difficult to keep Foraminifera alive in artificial 
conditions), but it seems at present that we must 
attribute to creatures at the level of the Protozoa 
some of that skilfulness in the use of materials 
which we are familiar with at higher reaches of the 
animal kingdom—among the tube-building worms, 
the tailor-crabs, the hive-bees, the trap-door and 
web-spinning spiders, and so on up to the nest- 
building birds. Just as we have rational skill and 
intelligent skill and instinctive skill, so perhaps we 
have in these Foraminifera organic skill, when the 
simple individuality, pulling itself together, acts as 
a unity and then perhaps feels itself as one. For 
it is not fantastic to suppose that in such critical 
moments of endeavor and adventure consciousness 
first found, and still finds, its simplest glimmering 
expression. Perhaps we are nearer the truth in sup- 
posing that Technitella says to itself in a quiet 
way of its own, “ AnclVio sono pittore,” than in 
supposing that its artifice is describable in terms of 
surface-tension. Those interested in these deep 
problems will watch with interest the progress of 
Mr. Heron-Allen’s and Mr. Earland’s investigations 
in continuance of those of which we have here 
