[Illustration: FIG. 6.--_Paramoecium_ sp.; buccal groove at right. (From life.)]
THE SINGLE-CELLED ANIMAL BODY.--PROTOPLASM AND THE CELL
=The single-celled body.=--The study of _Amoeba_ and _Paramoecium_ has made us acquainted with an animal body very different from that of the toad or the crayfish. These extraordinarily minute animals have a body so simple in its composition, compared with the toad's, that if the toad's body be taken for the type of the animal body, _Amoeba_ might readily be thought not to be an animal at all. The body of _Amoeba_ is not composed of organs, each with a particular function or work to perform. Whatever an _Amoeba_ does is done, we may say, with its whole body. But as we learn the things that this formless viscid speck of matter does, we see that it is truly an animal; that it really does those things which we have learned are the necessary life-processes of an animal. _Amoeba_ takes up and digests food composed of organic particles; it has the power of motion; it knows when its body comes in contact with some external object, that is, it can feel or has the power of sensation. _Amoeba_ takes in oxygen and gives out carbonic acid gas, and it can produce new individuals like itself, that is, it has the power of reproduction. But for the performance of these various life-processes or functions it has no special parts or organs, no mouth or alimentary canal, no lungs or gills, no legs, no special reproductive organs. We have here to do with one of the "simplest animals." With a minute, organless, soft speck of viscous matter called protoplasm for a body, the simplest structural condition to be found among living beings, _Amoeba_ nevertheless is capable of performing, in the simplest way in which they may be performed, those processes which are essential to animal life.
_Paramoecium_ has a body a little less simple than _Amoeba_. The food-particles are taken into the body always at a certain spot; this might be spoken of as a mouth. And the body has some special locomotory organs, if they may be so called, in the presence of the cilia. The body, too, has a definite shape or form. But, as in _Amoeba_ there is no alimentary canal, nor nervous system, nor respiratory system, nor reproductive system. The whole body feels and breathes and takes part in reproduction.