LIFE'S SIMPLEST CHILDRI 19 
And now, before \vc go on to other forms, let me 
ask you to pause and think what these little slime- 
specks tell us about the wonderful powers of I 
Can you guess at all how these creatures do tl r 
work ? We are obliged to have eyes to see our f< 
nerves and muscles to enable us to feel and grasp it, 
mouths to eat it, stomachs which secrete a juice in 
order to dissolve it, and a special pump, the heart, to 
drive it into the different parts of our body. But in 
these tiny slime-animals life has nothing better to 
work with than a mere drop of living matter, which 
is all alike throughout, so that if you broke it into 
twenty pieces every piece would be as much a living 
being as the whole drop. And yet by means of the 
wonderful gift of life, this slime-drop lives, and 
breathes, and cats, and increases, shrinks away if 
touch it, feels for its food, and moves from place to 
place, changing its shape to form limbs and 
threads, which are lost again as soon as it no loi 
needs them. 
Nor have we yet learnt one-half of the m 1 
which can be wrought in living specks of slim \ F r, 
on further inquiry, we find these simple 
veloping two quite different modes of life. [1 
one case the slime is moulded itself into 
forms, making- creatures with mouths, v. 
and with delicate lashes to drive the 
the water ; while in the other C iple 
drop with delicate 4 threads, it has learned to 
solid covering of the most exquisil 
To the first class k 
the forms drawn by its side in 
belong the microscopic sh< 
