Now, let us suppose that we have under our microscope a one-celled animalcule quite as simple in structure as our supposed ancestor.
When undisturbed, the bell animalcule has its slender stalk fully extended and its little threads lash the water vigorously, causing currents, containing food material, to travel towards its mouth.
The result of this fusion is that the bell animalcule takes on a new lease of life and once more begins to divide actively.
Each one possesses a firm cell-wall, filled with living matter; in an earlier chapter, we described the one called protean animalcule and, although it was composed of but a single cell it had no definite wall.
Then the sun animalcule shows real signs of life, for some of the other rods bend over and hold the captive so that it, eventually, is passed to a vacuole.
A sharp tap on the microscope slide will cause the creature to contract, the threads cease their lashing and the stalk contracts spirally, so that the body of the animalcule is drawn close to the object to which it is attached.
Elsewhere we have described how the protean animalcule feeds by flowing round its food-material, Euglena feeds in a similar manner, but it also feeds after the manner of a plant.
The threads of cotton wool will form a network, in the meshes of which the active little animalcule will be confined.
Then the lower ring of whips has served its purpose and in its place a long stalk grows; from this time forward the new bell animalcule will never move from the position it has chosen.
But rarely, the sun animalcule exhibits any movement and for long periods the only signs that it is living occur at feeding time.
Why exactly it is called the sun animalcule we cannot say, probably it has earned its title from the fact that it resembles the conventional idea of the sun, with light rays radiating all round its circumference.
In the same chapter we described the division of a proteus animalcule into two separate organisms, a process which is also undergone by bacteria when circumstances are favourable to their increase.
But there was, unfortunately, a little animalcule in a square hat who interrupted all the other animalcule philosophers.
Mr. Reddie informs me that I have not said a single word against his books, though I have given nearly a column to sixteen-string arithmetic, and as much to animalcule universes.
Let the first globe above us be but a blood-globule, as to size, in the animalcule of a still larger globe, which call the second globe above us.
Thus the bell-animalcule has a well-defined and constant form; a definite arrangement of cilia round the rim and in the vestibule by which food finds entrance to the body.
It may be very unequal, so that a minute, free-swimming animalcule is disengaged; or minute animalcules may result by repetition of division.
The other remains pear-shaped, and develops round the posterior region of the body a girdle of powerful vibratile cilia, by the lashing of which the animalcule tears itself away from the parent stem, and swims off through the water.
Then the connecting tentacles snapped and a new silvery animalcule prepared to reproduce in its turn.
The cyst is thus the part which performs the diseased process, the containing animalcule is merely the consumer of what is prepared for it by the cyst.
Here, after a fortnight's rest, the animalculebursts out, transformed into a perfect flea, leaving its exuviae in the bag.
This is not all; up to the present time the animalized corpuscle we are considering is still only a primitive animalcule because it as yet has no special organ.
I see by the last number of the Journal of Science and the Arts, that Mr. Varley has made a Diamond Lens, and also a single microscope with such motions as enable the observer to follow an animalcule in a diagonal direction.
Hence we habitually regard the whale and the elephant as essentially large and therefore important creatures, the animalcule as an essentially small and therefore unimportant organism.
Upon coasts occupied by the corallines, the reef-building animalcule does not work near the mouth of rivers.
It may be said that the Slipper Animalcule has but one answer to every question, but there are many Protozoa which have several enregistered reactions.
What is quite certain is that the behaviour of the animalcule is not like that of a potassium pill fizzing about in a basin of water, nor like the lurching movements of a gun that has got loose and "taken charge" on board ship.
For the body of a many-celled Wheel Animalcule or Rotifer is no bigger than many a Protozoon.
Another feature is that the locomotor activity of an animalcule often shows a distinct individuality: it may swim, for instance, in a loose spiral.
In the light of such a rôle the animalcule takes on a new interest.
If we approach the drop of water in which it swims with the barb of a feather dipped in ammonia, the animalcule is arrested in its movement, but its cils continue to move rapidly.
If a drop of pure water is added, the decomposition is suddenly stopped, and what remains of the animalculerecommences its swimming movements.
Remarking on a former paper, in which he had shown that the embryo hatched from the egg of a Planaria was a true polygastric animalcule of the genus Paramecium, he adds, that in former writers a link was wanting, viz.
When ananimalcule increases by self-division, a portion of the nucleus goes with each part, and it is probably the organ which stimulates the change.
Frequent examination of this animalcule has created a strong doubt in my mind whether it is rightly placed in our "systems.
Green vegetable monads, rich red and brown globes of similar characters, and any animalcule that comes in her way is acceptable; and even good-sized rotifers do not escape her all-consuming maw.
An animalcule tank will succeed best when it contains two or three kinds of growing plants, which oxygenize the air, and a moderate variety of decomposing organisms will supply food without making the water offensive.
It has been seen to hold an animalcule between its jaws till the latter has died, but it has no power to communicate the prey to the polype in its cell or to swallow and digest it on its own account.
A tap on the slide of glass on which they are placed for microscopic examination, initiates a literal reign of terror in the miniature state; for each animalcule shrinks up as if literally alarmed at the unwonted innovation in its existence.
The general appearance of each animalculehas already been described.
When the animalcule is stained with eosin, the nervous system can very readily be made out and followed throughout all of its ramifications.
This investigator witnessed a similar act in an animalcule belonging, it is true, to another family, but which is almost, if not quite, as simple in its organization as Stentor.
Know you not that around the animalcule that sports in the water there shines a halo, as around the star (The monas mica, found in the purest pools, is encompassed with a halo.
But man contemplates the universe as an animalcule would an elephant.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "animalcule" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word. Other words: amoeba; bacteria; germ; microorganism
