When the
jelly-speck meets any edible thing--a bit of dead plant, a wee creature
like itself, a microscopic egg--it proceeds to fold its own substance
slimily around it, making, as it were, a temporary mouth for the purpose
of swallowing it, and a temporary stomach for the purpose of quietly
digesting and assimilating it afterwards. Thus what at one moment is a
foot may at the next moment become a mouth, and at the moment after that
again a rudimentary stomach. The animal has no skin and no body, no
outside and no inside, no distinction of parts or members, no
individuality, no identity. Roll it up into one with another of its
kind, and it couldn't tell you itself a minute afterwards which of the
two it had really been a minute before. The question of personal
identity is here considerably mixed.
But as soon as we get to rather larger creatures of the same type, the
antithesis between the eater and the eaten begins to assume a more
definite character. The big jelly-bag approaches a good many smaller
jelly-bags, microscopic plants, and other appropriate food-stuffs, and,
surrounding them rapidly with its crawling arms, envelopes them in its
own substance, which closes behind them and gradually digests them.
Everybody knows, by name at least, that revolutionary and evolutionary
hero, the amoeba--the terror of theologians, the pet of professors,
and the insufferable bore of the general reader. Well, this parlous and
subversive little animal consists of a comparatively large mass of soft
jelly, pushing forth slender lobes, like threads or fingers, from its
own substance, and gliding about, by means of these tiny legs, over
water-plants and other submerged surfaces.
Pages:
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241