Simple Forms of Life. 203 



which, may be easily observed in their resting stage. Many 

 plants emit spores that swim freely for a time (zoospores), and 

 others form in little receptacles antherozoids, which swim 

 and meet another class of cells, the fertilization of which they 

 effect, somewhat as the pollen, borne on true anthers, acts upon 

 the germs of higher plants. 



The entire life history of the lower forms of animals and 

 vegetables is very incompletely known. In a few cases a 

 complete cycle of changes has been traced out, but it is pro- 

 bable that a great number of objects to which specific names 

 are given, are not in themselves complete in their kind, but 

 only early forms of more complicated organisms. 



A student is always surprised to find that a great many 

 adult forms have lost faculties or organs that might have been 

 expected to remain. Thus locomotion seems an attribute of 

 dignity, and the loss of the power might be taken as an indi- 

 cation of retrogression ; but in many of the lower vegetables, 

 and in many animals also, the locomotive stage is that of 

 infancy, while the adult approaches more to the Buddhist 

 idea of perfection, and enjoys repose. That which should 

 elicit attention is the relation between the structure and 

 attributes of any object, in any stage from that of the egg to 

 maturity, and the observer should watch the work it has to 

 perform for the perpetuation of its own species, and its 

 defence against foes. In both the. animal and the vegetable 

 worlds we notice cases in which the infant form must either 

 perish or be able to take care of itself, while in others 

 it may be safely left to depend upon maternal aid. Nature 

 supplies an infinite variety of conditions in which life is pos- 

 sible, and a corresponding variety of living beings capable of 

 thriving under circumstances having the right relation to their 

 structure and ways. As Darwin has shown, those best fitted 

 for their conditions thrive, those least fitted pass away ; but 

 such is the harmony of the entire system, that no group can 

 perform its own duties without benefiting others. And in 

 the microscopic world of life we see the interdependence of 

 different sorts of beings displayed conspicuously on a scale 

 which is extremely small if we contemplate only the spectacle 

 afforded in our slides and preparations, but which is enormously 

 large in nature, inasmuch as no process of growth or decay 

 occurs on the surface of the globe without minute organisms 

 contributing towards, or even determining the result. 



In the protoplasm of the plant, and in that similar substance 

 the sarcode of the animal, as we can see it through the micro- 

 scope in the simpler organic forms, we may trace actions that 

 lie at the foundation of all terrestrial life. In the lower kinds 

 a few actions are co-ordinated and combined for a simple 



