THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



as the air. A temperature of minus 40° Fahr. did not 

 kill the animals. 



Then they were alternately frozen and thawed weekly 

 for a long period, and took no harm. They were dried and 

 frozen, and thawed and moistened, and still they lived. 

 At last they were dried, and the bottle containing them 

 was immersed in boiling water, which was allowed to cool 

 gradually and still a great many survived. Again they 

 were put into sea-water, and into the brine from the bottom 

 of Green Lake, which is so salt that it only freezes at 

 about zero (Fahr.). They were left in these salt waters 

 for a month, yet as soon as they were transferred to fresh 

 water they began to crawl about as though nothing had 

 happened. 



Such is the vitality of these httle animals that they 

 can endure being taken from ice at a minus temperature, 

 thawed, dried and subjected to a temperature not very far 

 short of boiling-point, all within a few hours (a range 

 of more than 200° Fahr.) . It is not the eggs merely that 

 survive all these changes, but the grown animals. These 

 are animals comparatively high in the scale. The rotifers 

 are worms, and the water-bears (which stood the same 

 tests) are cousins to the insects and spiders. Some very 

 lowly plants are not killed by being put in boiling water 

 and doubtless many very simple animals can live through 

 cold greater than we found in the Antarctic. Men can 

 endure exposure for a time to very much lower tempera- 

 tures, and to dry heat far above the temperature of boil- 

 ing-water, but the case of the rotifer is very different. Its 

 little body actually takes those different temperatures, 

 man's body does not. 



It is a curious fact that these animals, which can endure 

 such extremes of heat and cold, and other unfavourable 

 conditions, readily die when left in cold water at a mod- 



240 



