Just Ooze and Slime! Is the Expression Fair? 



E. Laurence Palmer 



Assistant Professor of Rural Education Cornell University 



The person who reads this article and has not had some experi- 

 ence with its subject is either an exception or was brought up in the 

 heart of a city or a desert. Even these latter may be among the 

 many whose experiences are if such a nature that they are forced 

 by necessity to remember them. The writer remembers a certain 

 sixteenth of April when he was wading an icy trout stream in New 

 York State. He was sure that if he could only wade to a definite 

 point a bite on his hook would be a certainty. The trout never 

 had the opportunity to bite however and the writer spent the 

 remainder of the day trying to dry his clothing in the back room of 

 a country store while his companions were able to sit back and gloat 

 over the day's catch that night. The cause of all the trouble was 

 the coating of slime which covered the rocks and reduced friction 

 to such a point that the swiftly-slowing current did the rest. 



To most of us and to the writer at that time the coating of 

 slime meant nothing but one of the apparent inconveniences 

 which nature seems to provide to keep life in the open from becom- 

 ing perfect. It was consigned to the same category as the gnats 

 and mosquitoes which buzzed about and stung us but which also 

 did their part in furnishing food more or less directly to some of 

 the very fish which called us to the stream. As the girl said when 

 she pulled her small brother from under the sofa, however, "It's the 

 little things that tell?" and the insignificant slime of the brook 

 bottom and forms closely resembling it may have a further reach- 

 ing influence upon the life and geography of this earth of ours 

 than do superior (?) beings like ourselves. 



It is not the purpose of this article to deal with this slime in the 

 manner in which the systematic biologist would take it up though 

 it forms a wonderfully large and interesting field in systematic 

 biology. Instead the writer hopes to show how these oozes and 

 slimes have left and are leaving their imprint indelibly on the sur- 

 face of the earth and how even though some of us might consider 

 them an evil they are a necessary evil. Even though this is a 

 "slippery" subject we cannot evade the issue and neglect mention- 

 ing something of the life habits of these organisms. 



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