i8 
LIFE AND HER CHILDREN. 
parts of any kind, knew how to find its food ; without 
muscles or limbs it was able to creep over it ; without 
a mouth it could suck out its living body ; without a 
stomach it could digest the food in the midst of its 
own slime, and throw out the hard parts which it 
did not want. 
This is the history of one of Life's simplest 
children. 
Here is another (Fig. 2), which lives not only in the 
sea but also in pools and puddles, and in the gutters 
of our streets and of 
lg * our house-tops. Any- 
where that water lies 
stagnant these little 
drops of slime will grow 
up and make it their 
home. Sometimes few 
and far between, some- 
times in crowds, so that 
the whole pond would 
seem alive if we could 
see them, they live, and 
multiply, and die under our very feet. Can any- 
thing be less like an animal than this shapeless 
mass (a, Fig. 2) ? Yet under a strong microscope it 
may be seen moving lazily along by putting out a 
thick slimy finger and then letting all the rest of its 
body flow after it. When it touches food it flows 
over it just as the Thread-slime did, and dissolving 
the soft parts sends out the hard refuse anywhere, it 
does not matter where, for it has no skin over its 
body, being merely one general mass of slime. 
* Protamoeba. 
The Finger Slime.* — Haeckel. 
a, At rest, b, Feeding on minute 
slime-plants. 
