excited, send back some other influence, dependent neither on increased secretion nor on the inflection of the tentacles, which causes the protoplasm to aggregate in cell beneath cell. This may be called a reflex action. How it differs from that which proceeds from the nerve-ganglion of an animal, if it differ at all, no one can say. It is probably the only known case of reflex action in the vegetable kingdom.

Concerning the mechanism of the movements and the character of the motor impulse little is known. During the act of inflection fluid surely passes from one part to another of the tentacles. In explanation of the fact it is claimed that the motor impulse is allied in nature to the aggregating process, and that this causes the molecules of the cellwalls to approach each other, as do the molecules of the protoplasm within the cells, thereby causing the cells in all to contract. This is probably the hypothesis that best accords with the observed facts, although some strong objections may be urged against this view. The elasticity of their outer cells, which comes into activity as soon as those on the inner side cease contracting with prepotent force, leads largely to the re-expansion of the tentacles, but there is reason to suspect that fluid is continually and slowly attracted into the outer cells during the act of re-expansion, thus augmenting their tension.

With respect to the structure, movements, constitution. and habits of Dionæa muscipula and Drosera rotundifolia, as well as kindred species, little has been made out by patient study and investigation in comparison with what remains unexplained and unknown. Many of their movements, especially of Dionæa and Drosera, seem so sensible and intelligent that the reflecting mind of man can hardly hesitate to assign them high positions in organic nature and the possession, even though in a very small degree, of that consciousness with which animal life is endowed. That man is psychically related to all life is the belief of millions in the old world, and the hope of millions in the new. In this thought

is the escape from materialism, that threat of the ignorant and unbelieving. Higher conceptions of beauty and greatness are now being entertained by the multitudes, and we begin to feel that the next great step is being taken when we shall become, instead of poor trembling denizens of a perishable world, proud and conscious citizens of an imperishable universe. That we of the upper ranks of God's creation alone possess an inner life which shall transcend all change is no longer a general belief, but there is a growing hope that all nature shares it, and that love is its expression and its method. All existence is a unit. Life, law and love are divine. Man, looking calmly about him, cannot set himself apart as something essentially different from nature, but must recognize himself as a part, and include love in the universal scheme of development. All other expressions of life must share with him in the divine love and progress. His dogmas, founded on mistaken traditions, have given way to science, and he cannot but believe that love is in and of the soul, and that all life has some sort of development of soul. Because plant-life has no brain, and therefore has no intelligence, no mind, no soul, is preposterous to contemplate. Who can positively affirm that brain alone is the seat of conscious intelligence? None but He alone, the Giver of all life, who sits enthroned and exalted in the everlasting heavens.

SLIME-ANIMALS.

OSSIBLY the simplest of life's children are the singularly unique and structureless little Finger Slimes, which live not only in the sea but also in puddles and pools, and in the gutters of our streets and of our house-tops. Anywhere that stagnant water abounds these tiny drops of slime will grow up and make it their home. Sometimes few and far between, and sometimes in such immense crowds that the entire pond would seem, if they could be seen with the unaided vision, literally alive with them, they live, and multiply and die under our very feet.

Nothing can be less animal-like than one of these shapeless masses of pure protoplasm, yet under a microscope of strong power it may be seen moving lazily along by pulling out a thick finger of slime and then letting all the rest of its body flow after it. When coming into contact with food it may be said to flow over it, dissolving the soft parts and sending out the hard, indigestible refuse anywhere, no matter where, for its body is devoid of skin, being merely one general mass of homogeneous slime.

But what can these little slime specks tell us about the wonderful powers of life? Nothing at all, it would seem, for in these tiny creatures life has nothing better to work with than a mere drop of living matter, which is all alike throughout, so that if broken into a hundred pieces every piece would be as much a living being as the whole. And yet by means of the wonderful gift of life, with which the all-wise Omnipotence has endowed it, this slime-drop lives, and breathes, and eats, and increases, shrinks away when you

touch it, feels for its food, and moves from place to place, changing its shape to form limbs and feeling-threads, which are let into the general organism when they have served the purpose of their existing, only to be succeeded by others as short-lived as themselves when necessity requires their development.

So small are these, creatures that the largest specimen will be found to be smaller than the smallest pin's head. Examine how we will, there will be found no mouth, no stomach, no muscles, no nerves, no parts of any kind. The animal looks merely like a minute drop of gum with fine grains diffused throughout, floating in the water, some times with outstretched arms, and at other times as a simple drop. An analysis of the matter of which it is composed shows it to be much the same as a speck of white-of-egg. Yet it is alive, for it breathes. Kept in a drop of water, it uses up the oxygen it contains, and renders the water foul by the carbonic acid it breathes out. The arms, so necessary in the procurement of food, can be drawn in and thrown out when and where the animal chooses, showing that some option is undoubtedly exercised in the matter. Minute jelly-plants, that live in the water, and even higher animals than itself, constitute its food. The presence of an animal with a shell does not deter it from attack, for it is just as able to deal with it as with the softer, shell-less kinds, sucking their jelly-like contents, and discarding the empty, innutritious shells.

Quite as interesting among the Moners, to which the Finger Slime belongs, is the Protomyxa aurantiaca, a shapeless bit of transparent matter, containing merely circulating granules. Locomotion is effected by extending the body into pseudopodia, or false feet, and contracting them. Its movement is slow and gliding. When at rest it appears as a mere lump of jelly, but its whole demeanor changes when in the presence of a living animal suited for food. Fine threads immediately begin to shoot out from all sides, which fuse about the unsuspecting prey, while all the little grains in the slime

course to and fro. For five or six hours the little fellow hugs closely round the prey until it has become thoroughly absorbed, at least the nutritious parts, into its body-mass, when it draws itself away, or back into its original place, leaving by its side the skeleton of its late victim. Without eyes or ears or parts of any kind it knows how to find its food; without muscles or limbs it is able to seize it; without a mouth it can suck out its living body, and without a stomach it can digest the food in the midst of its own slime, and cast out the parts for which it has no use.

When Protomyxa has become a burden to itself it divides itself by a simple process of fission, each part being complete in itself, or it assumes a thick covering, becoming encysted, as it is termed. In a little while the enclosed mass divides into spheres, the cell-wall bursts, and the little spheres, which have now taken on a sort of tadpole shape, float out upon the water, where they soon assume the parent-form.