Desire is the ceaseless life-urge of all things, from amoeba to archangel.

All that differentiates man from an amoeba has enabled him to get safe through certain straits where the lower forms of life were left behind to perish; but it has also made it impossible for him to live in the simpler conditions he has escaped from; like a parvenu whose luxurious habits have gradually created a number of new necessities for him, which make a return to his original poverty and hardships quite impracticable.

Now, while there are found in the lowest realm of animal life, organisms like the amoeba of stagnant pools, consisting of nothing more than minute masses of protoplasm, there are others like them which possess a small central body called a nucleus.

Thus, the amoeba begins its life as a cell split off from its parent.

This divides in its turn, and each half is a complete amoeba.

When we come a little higher than the amoeba, we find organisms which consist of several cells, and a specialization of function begins to appear.

Later on, we shall see the white blood corpuscles exhibit all the characters of the amoeba (Fig. 2).

Again, while the red corpuscles are changed only by some influence from without, as pressure and the like, the colorless corpuscles spontaneously undergo active and very curious changes of form, resembling those of the amoeba, a very minute organism found in stagnant water (Fig. 2).

Amoeba (Gr. ameibo, to change).

Like an amoeba.

There he is nowcoming up to the full estate of manhood by the various stages of protozoon, amoeba, mollusc, fish, reptile, bird, mammal, Man.

Nor was it known whether it was of bacterial nature, or fungoid, or an animal parasitee.g., an amoeba.

Its upper portion is slowly twisted through the opening in the apex of the parent wall, the granular contents of the lower end flowing into the extruded portion in a manner reminding one of the flow of protoplasm in a living amoeba.

In the long journey from amoeba to man, any circumstance causing a complete halt for even a brief period meant extinction, while even a persistent interference produced a weakened organism, if not an arrest of development.

AMOEBA, a minute animalcule of the simplest structure, being a mere mass of protoplasm; absorbs its food at every point all over its body by means of processes protruded therefrom at will, with the effect that it is constantly changing its shape.