Even in this case the symbiotically united organisms have not remained unaltered. The algæ at least differ from others of their kind in their power of resistance to living animal protoplasm. They are not digested by it, and we may infer from this that they possess some sort of protective adaptation against the dissolving power of animal digestive juices; they must, therefore, have undergone some variation, and adapted themselves to the new situation. Probably their cell-membrane has become impenetrable to the stuffs which would naturally digest them, an adaptation which could not be referred to direct effect or to use, but only to the accumulation of useful variations which cropped up--in other words, to natural selection. That any adaptive variation has taken place on the part of the host, whether polyp, amœba, or Infusorian, cannot be made out. None of these have altered their original mode of life; they do not depend on the nourishment afforded by the algæ, but feed on other animals, if these come in their way, and they live in water rich in oxygen like other species allied to them, and therefore are not altogether dependent on the algæ in this connexion; but they can no more help having their partners than the pig can help having Trichinæ in its muscles. Similar plant-cells, not green however, but yellow, called zooxanthellæ, live in great numbers in the endoderm of various sea-anemones and in the soft plasmic substance of many Radiolarians. In both these cases we must look for the benefit they confer on their host in the oxygen they give off, for, like the green zoochlorellæ, they break up carbonic acid gas in the light, and give off oxygen; they no longer occur, as far as is known, in a free state, but are always associated with the host, and they must therefore have altered in constitution, and have adapted themselves to the conditions of the symbiosis. Higher plants, too, sometimes have symbiotic relations with animals; the most remarkable and best-known example is the relation between ants and certain trees, in which the ants protect trees which afford them in return both a dwelling-place and food. We owe our knowledge of these cases to Thomas Belt and Fritz Müller, and more recently it has been materially increased by Schimper's researches.