BEFORE THE DAWN OF ART 285 
given some indication. It is difficult indeed to 
break off. How extraordinarily quaint, for instance, 
it is to read of the probability at least that Saccam- 
mina now and then breaks down its barns to build 
greater, “re-dissolving the cement with which its 
house is built, with a view to increasing its size 
by the interstitial addition from within of stored 
material””!’ How we are made to think by the 
story of Marsipella spiralis, which arranges its 
borrowed sponge-spicules in a left-handed spiral 
and embeds them firmly in cement, thus improv- 
ing on the shell of its neighbor-species Marsipella 
cylindrica, which forms a long and exceedingly 
friable tube! “It would appear that a long series 
of generations of Marsipella cylindrica having 
suffered from this extreme friability, it was left for 
Marsipella spiralis to make the same great discovery , 
as did the prehistoric genius who invented string— 
it has clearly realized that a twisted yarn is stronger, 
than an untwisted wisp of fiber.” This description 
is indeed rather more anthropomorphic in phrase- 
ology than we care for, but we venture to think that 
it errs on the right side. Claparéde and Lachmann, 
writing in 1858 (when the Origin of Species was 
published), spoke of the “absurdity” of supposing 
that the complicated shell of a Foraminifer could be 
secreted by “an amorphous and scarcely organized 
mass of jelly.” ‘‘ The animal cannot be just a mass 
of sarcode.”” Something is now known in regard to 
the intricacy of protoplasmic organization, but we, 
speaking for ourselves, would still say: “The 
