38 
J. BADCOCK—ON MELICEETA EINGENS. 
and you fancy it must eventually be taken in again. Eut not so; 
for as often as it comes forward, so often is it thrust back with greater 
intensity, until the creature, wearied out, apparently, with this 
incessant repetition, and finding it impossible to go on with its 
work and feeding unless compelled to take in that which is 
loathsome, stops altogether and retires, as if in offended dignity, 
within its citadel. I have spoken with Dr. Hudson about this 
action of the Melicerta , and he confirms my observation, stating 
that while many other microscopic creatures are not so particular, 
and do not seem to mind taking in again this form of excreta, 
yet he has never seen it done by Melicerta ringens. Some people 
think that microscopists are blessed with too lively imagina¬ 
tions, and that they are given to exaggerations in their 
descriptions and inferences, yet I would ask the most prosaic 
among my hearers what inference other than that of intelligent 
selection he would draw from such a fact as the one I have 
just described. Eut, says the objector, the animal is so small, 
so insignificant, that it is impossible to credit it with any¬ 
thing like intelligence. I admit its smallness. It is because of 
that, that I am here describing it—because of that, that the 
microscope has been found necessary to see and know it—because 
of that, that it is so wonderful, exciting our admiration and 
elevating and enlarging our conceptions of the Divinity which 
pervades the universe; but I submit that small and great are only 
relative terms, and that, to other conceivable organisms in the 
universe, we ourselves may appear to be of microscopic dimensions, 
—and as to the other objection, that of insignificance, I cannot at 
all agree with the objector, that the one quality involves the other. 
Smallness by no means implies insignificance. On the contrary, 
the greatest and most enduring effects are oftener than otherwise 
the results of apparently insignificant causes, and this is especially 
the case with regard to those minute creatures which, from pre¬ 
existing materials, have formed by their united and untiring energies 
no small portion of the solid framework of the great globe which 
we inhabit.^ 
* I have to acknowledge my obligation to the writings of other investigators, 
and especially to Mr. Bed well’s admirable article in the ‘Journal of the 
Boyal Microscopical Society,’ for December, 1877. 
