38 
THE STORY OF THE OAK TREE 
microscope put one on a glass slide under his lense, 
where it will appear about two hundred thousand times 
as big as it really is. Here is a picture of it. 
All around the edge we see a clear 
line. This is the outer covering of the 
cell, a kind of skin called the cell-wall 
which keeps it separate from its neigh- 
'“protopiasm 11 ’ bor cells. Inside that we see the pro- 
and Nucleus 
toplasm, colorless as white of egg, 
and somewhere in this is a smaller round or oval 
speck which is the most important part of the cell; this 
speck is called the Nucleus. 
Now, a beautiful and splendidly moving animal such 
as man, with a brain and five senses, is composed of 
enormous numbers of cells. A butterfly has not so many, 
and a jelly fish has fewer still. Swimming about in the 
water, so small you cannot see them without our friend 
and his microscope, live animals made of only one cell! 
You can just imagine how small they are, and how 
simply made. Such a one is the ameba, humblest of all 
living creatures. The ameba has no arms and no legs, 
no head and no tail, no eyes and no mouth, no brain and 
no desires; it is naked, nothing but a nucleus surrounded 
by a bit of jelly; yet it is able to find food and eat, it 
moves by stretching itself out and streaming along, and, 
most marvelous of all, it is able to feel and respond to 
