admit the liquid that it needs; nevertheless the liquid passes into the cell, through its delicate cell-wall, and passes from this cell to other cells, upwards from the rootlet to the bud. It is in this way, also, that the Opalina feeds: it is all-mouth, no-mouth; all-stomach, no-stomach. Every part of its body performs the functions which in more complex animals are performed by organs specially set apart. It feeds without mouth, breathes without lungs, and moves without muscles.
The Opalina, as I said, is a parasite. It may be found in various animals, and almost always in the frog. You will, perhaps, ask why it should be considered a parasite; why may it not have been swallowed by the frog in a gulp of water? Certainly, nothing would have been easier. But to remove your doubts, I open the skull of this frog, and carefully remove a drop of the liquid found inside, which, on being brought under the microscope, we shall most probably find containing some animalcules, especially those named Monads. These were not swallowed. They live in the cerebro-spinal fluid, as the Opalina lives in the digestive tube. Nay, if we extend our researches, we shall find that various organs have their various parasites. Here, for instance, is a parasitic worm from the frog's bladder. Place it under the microscope, with a high power, and behold! It is called Polystomum—many-mouthed, or, more properly, many-suckered. You are looking at the under side, and will observe six large suckers with their starlike clasps (e), and the horny instrument (f), with which the animal bores its way. At a there is another sucker, which serves also as a mouth; at b you perceive the rudiment of a gullet, and at d the reproductive organs. But pay attention to the pretty branchings of the digestive tube (c) which ramifies through the body like a blood-vessel.
 | An image should appear at this position in the text. To use the entire page scan as a placeholder, edit this page and replace "{{missing image}}" with "{{raw image|The Cornhill magazine (Volume 1).djvu/81}}". Otherwise, if you are able to provide the image then please do so. For guidance, see Wikisource:Image guidelines and Help:Adding images. |  |
Fig. 3.
Polystomum Integerrimum, Magnified.
This arrangement of the digestive tube is found in many animals, and is often mistaken for a system of blood-vessels. In one sense this is correct; for these branching tubes are carriers of nutriment, and the only circulating vessels such animals possess; but the nutriment is chyme, not blood: these simple animals have not arrived at the dignity of blood, which is a higher elaboration of the food, fitted for higher organisms.
Thus may our frog, besides its own marvels, afford us many "authentic tidings of invisible things," and is itself a little colony of Life. Nature is economic as well as prodigal of space. She fills the illimitable heavens with planetary and starry grandeurs, and the tiny atoms moving over the crust of earth she makes the homes of the infinitely little. Far as the
