1 
24 LIFE AND HER CHILDREN. 
Let us now take one of these shells {a, Fig. 4), and 
see how it was built up. The grown animal as he 
looks when the shell is taken off him is shown in 
Fig. 5. In the beginning, when he is quite young, he 
is merely a round drop (i,Fig. 5) with 
a delicate transparent shell and an 
opening, out of which he puts his 
threads of slime. Then as he out- 
grows this first chamber he draws 
his slime threads together and forms 
a bud (2) outside the shell, and 
round this bud he builds a second 
theMilidite,^°Fig.4, chamber out of the end of which 
showing the buds of he again puts his threads. Then he 
IZk ^hich 3 ' :l C ch forms ^e next bud (3), and goes 
chamber is built.—- on thus till he has built a com- 
Carpmter. plete shell, generally of seven cham- 
bers ; and as each new compartment is so placed 
as to overlap the one before it, the whole when 
finished has the curious form a, Fig. 4, altogether 
not larger than a millet -seed, from which it takes 
the name of Miliola. These miliolite shells may 
be found by the help of the microscope in the 
damp sand of almost any sea-shore, and while some 
of the shells will be empty, others will still be filled 
with the dark-yellow animal slime. 
Think of the constant manufacture of such delicate 
shells as these going on all over the world, and the 
makers but a drop of slime ! And lest you should 
be inclined to think little of it as a mere mechanical 
process, the miliolite himself tells us another story, for 
from time to time we find miliolites with shells made, 
— not of lime, — but of grains of sand and tiny broken 
