Page:Aurora Australis.djvu/172

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AURORA AUSTRALIS.

minutes ago? They do not exist. The water is pulsating with vigorous life, and the rotifers appear quite unconscious that anything unusual is toward.

These delicate animals must escape destruction by reason of their small size. When they have a drop of water to swim in they have a world. However small the drop of spray in which they may be enclosed, it will be covered by the elastic surface film, which will save the animals from jars. They are too small to hurt.

If, then, they cannot be hurt under these conditions, the conditions are not unfavourable, to Synchæta. They only seem so to us, since those breakers would kill us, and would destroy a strong ship. It is even so in all the other instances: conditions which would be quickly fatal to us do not really present any difficulty to animals which have become adapted to them.

Endurance Of Drought.

The leech-like creeping rotifers of the order Bdelloida supply the most remarkable instances of the