PROTOMYXA FEEDING.
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.
Like all living things, these Moners have a desire for food, which their protoplasm first appropriates, then converts into available material. They thus grow and increase in size, but when they become too large to be comfortable they usually split into two, in obedience to the law of their being, and each half goes its own way as a living animal. This is the earliest form of parentage, the simplest form of reproduction. Thus yielding to this necessity of a separation of one into more than one, these Moners live on forever, or as long as the earth continues to support life, thus becoming immortal in the scientific sense in which the term is used to devote a continuance of the physical life on earth. They only and their nearest relatives, as simple in structure as themselves, achieve this stupendous result, for in such a division of their entire substance they know no loss, no death of any part, violence only being able to sunder them from life. They resolve themselves into their own offspring, and nothing perishes.
PRIMITIVE LASSO-THROWERS.
Every one knows that the long cord or thong, called the lasso, is the peculiar weapon of the South American hunter. Almost from his earliest childhood the young Gaucho learns to amuse himself with it, and as soon as he is able to walk takes great pleasure in catching young birds and other animals around his father’s hut, hurling the long lash with such dexterity that the noose drops over their bodies and brings them to his feet. Did we wish to select from among all the denizens of life the most brilliant, graceful, and sylph-like, whose very life-histories read more like the romance of poetry than sober reality, we would choose those which might be appropriately designated the lasso-throwers.
Now among animals, as is only too well known, any weapons which they could be called upon to use must develop in their own bodies, and therefore it could hardly be suspected that a simple jelly-animal could be provided with a lasso ready grown in its own flesh. Yet it is so, for in that class of animals, which ranks just above the sponges, we discover a weapon of this kind as simple and as deadly, and far more wonderful in its action than any used by man.
In fresh-water ponds, attached by its base to the under surfaces of aquatic plants, may be found a very small animal, just large enough to be seen without the aid of a lens, usually pale green, but sometimes of a brown color. This is our common hydra, technically called Hydra fusca. It is nothing more than a tube or sac, with a sucker at one end to hold on with, and a mouth at the other, surrounded with from five to eight hollow tentacles or feelers, which opens into a central cavity or stomach. Firm and muscular are the walls of the sac, so that the little creature, which is not fixed permanently to whatever it is found clinging to, may stretch itself out or draw back as its own volition dictates, or move slowly along by means of its sucker, or float easily or contentedly upon the water. But the most remarkable, as well as the most interesting thing about this odd creature is the power which it possesses of overcoming animals more powerful and active than itself.
FRESH-WATER HYDRA MOORED AND SEARCHING FOR PREY.