Now it is plain that in an age of increasing microbic cannibalism the
toughening of the skin would be one of the first advantages to secure
survival, and this is, in point of fact, almost the second leading
principle in early development. Naturally, as the skin becomes firmer,
the animal can no longer, like the Amoeba, take food at, or make limbs
of, any part of it. There must be permanent pores in the membrane to
receive food or let out rays of the living substance to act as oars
or arms. Thus we get an immense variety amongst these Protozoa, as the
one-celled animals are called. Some (the Flagellates) have one or two
stout oars; some (the Ciliates) have numbers of fine hairs (or cilia).
Some have a definite mouth-funnel, but no stomach, and cilia drawing
the water into it. Some (Vorticella, etc.), shrinking from the open
battlefield, return to the plant-principle, live on stalks, and have
wreaths of cilia round the open mouth drawing the water to them. Some
(the Heliozoa) remain almost motionless, shooting out sticky rays of
their matter on every side to catch the food. Some form tubes to live
in; some (Coleps) develop horny plates for armour; and others develop
projectiles to pierce their prey (stinging threads).
This miniature world is full of evolutionary interest, but it is too
vast for detailed study here. We will take one group, which we know
to have been already developed in the Cambrian, and let a study of its
development stand for all. In every lecture or book on "the beauties of
the microscope" we find, and are generally greatly puzzled by, minute
shells of remarkable grace and beauty that are formed by some of these
very elementary animals They are the Radiolaria (with flinty shells, as
a rule) and the Thalamophora (with chalk frames). Evolution furnishes a
simple key to their remarkable structure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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