ty) living
microbes of the same disease enter the blood, the opsonin is ready for
them. They are, to put it picturesquely, like oysters at the
oyster-bar, peppered and vinegared "in no time," and then swallowed by
the phagocytes by the dozen. This seems almost too comic a view of the
deadly struggle of man and higher animals for health and freedom from
the swarming pests which everywhere invade him. Yet it is correct, and
involves a simple and fundamental truth. Our properties and appetites
are but the sum of those of the protoplasmic organisms--the cells--of
which we are built up. Our need for a relish with oysters is the same
thing as the need of the phagocyte for a relish with its microbes, not
something "poetically" compared to it. The story of "the oysters and
the carpenter" might be replaced by that of "the microbes and the
phagocyte." The saying, "Fine words butter no parsnips," finds a
parallel in the remark that "The drinking of drugs does not opsonise
microbes."

Half-way between us and the amoeba-like unicellular organisms we
find the earth-worm preparing his piece of lettuce (as Darwin showed)
with a juice exuded from his mouth, a "relish" reminding one of the
Kava drink of the South Sea Islanders. To "opsonise" or render
attractive by the application of chemical "relish" is a proceeding
which we find in operation in the feeding of the minute colourless
corpuscles which engorge the still more minute bacteria--and also in
the preparation of their food by various lower animals, and finally in
the elaborate flavouring and cooking of his food by civilised man!

CHAPTER XXIII

THE STRANGE STORY OF ANIMAL LIFE IN NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand consists of two islands, together more than 1,000 miles
long and of about 200,000 square miles area. It is 1,000 miles distant
from New Caledonia, the nearest island of any considerable size, and
is 1,500 miles from the great Continental island of Australia. There
is no other island in the world so large and at the same time so
remote from other considerable tracts of land. Australia is closely
connected by island groups at a distance of only 100 miles to Asia.
The isolation of New Zealand is unique. The seas around it are of vast
depth and of proportionately great age. During the chalk
period--before the great deposits and changes of the earth's face
which we assign to the Tertiary period--New Zealand consisted of a
number of small scattered islands, which gradually,