LIFE'S SIMPLEST CHILDRl 3« 
slime manages to suck their bodies out of the 
Still these hard spiky outside skeletons must be a 
great protection to them, and we find every kind 
shape devised by these wonderful architects in the 
construction of their tiny houses, though these ar 
small as to look like a grain of sand when seen by 
the naked eye. Perhaps the most wonderful of all is 
the one shown at/", Fig. 8. It is broken open to s 
the three balls one within another, each kept in its 
place by rods of flint passing through the whole. 
This beautiful little shell looks just like the carved 
balls of the Chinese, yet, instead of being the work of 
intelligent man, it is built by a mere mass of slime. 
We have now learned to know the simplest i I 
animals ; how they live, and move, and the homes 
they build. All the forms arc not quite equally 
simple, for some of the higher ones have a solid 
spot or nucleus in the middle of the slime, and some- 
times a small watery bubble, as in the Mona 
Bell-flower, which contracts and expands at inter, 
and in these forms the outside of the slime is rather 
thicker than the inside, so that we might S 
they are on the road to having a skin, while the 
shell-builders have a uniform slim} But 
classes alike belong to that first and lov 
oi the children of life, called by 
Protozoa [protos first, soon animal 
The still water everywhere is swa . tl 
though we may see and know nothir. \ I 
we owe them something ; for not only do the 
shells o( many ol them form our 
those now living purify our \ 
the living and dead matter in them. 
