The efforts which the animal then made to
recover the missing ones, winding itself round and round them, but
failing to bring them into the fold with the rest, because they were too
small, and evaded all efforts to secure them, when once parted from
the first little compact mass, convinced me that there was a definite
purpose in its attempts, and that even a being so low in the scale
of animal existence has some dim consciousness of a relation to its
offspring. I afterwards unwound also the mass of eggs, which, when
coiled up as I first saw it, made a roll of white substance about the
size of a coffee-bean, and found that it consisted of a string of eggs,
measuring more than twelve feet in length, the eggs being held together
by some gelatinous substance that cemented them and prevented them from
falling apart. Cutting this string across, and placing a small section
under the microscope, I counted on one surface of such a cut from
seventy to seventy-five eggs; and estimating the entire number of eggs
according to the number contained on such a surface, I found that there
were not less than eight millions of eggs in the whole string. The
fertility of these lower animals is truly amazing, and is no doubt a
provision of Nature against the many chances of destruction to which
these germs, so delicate and often microscopically small, must be
exposed. The higher we rise in the Animal Kingdom, the more limited do
we find the number of progeny, and the care bestowed upon them by the
parents is in proportion to this diminution.
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