AQUATIC MICROSCOPY FOR BEGINNERS. 



CHAPTER IV. 



RHfZOPODS. 



The Rhizopods are the lowest animals in the scale 

 of life. Scarcely more than a drop of jelly-like proto- 

 plasm, the lowest of these lowly creatures live, move, 

 eat, and multiply. Some are so far down in the scale 

 .that they are actually only a particle of soft and 

 unprotected protoplasm, moving, like the common 

 Amoeba, which is one of the Rhizopods, by protruding 

 long, thread-like projections of its own substance 

 from any part of its body, and withdrawing them 

 again into its substance, where they entirely dis- 

 appear. These protruded parts, by means of which 

 the creatures move and capture their food, are called 

 pseudopodia, from two Greek words, meaning false 

 feet. And since they often extend to l.ong distances 

 from the body of the animal, dividing and branching 

 somewhat after th'e manner of roots, the group of 

 lowly animals producing these pseudopodia is named 

 the Rhizopods, or root-footed, a word also from the 

 Greek. 



The Amoeba, and those Rhizopods nearest to it in 

 structure, are formed of naked protoplasm; they are 

 simply a drop of colorless, living jelly. But some 

 higher in the same group secrete or build around 



