724 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Bessels assigns to these the name of Protobathyhius, but they are 

 apparently indistinguishable from the Bathybius of the Porcupine. 

 Further arguments against the reality of Bathybius will therefore be 

 needed before a doctrine founded on observations so carefully con- 

 ducted shall be relegated to the region of confuted hypotheses. 



Assuming, then, that Bathybius, however much its supposed wide 

 distribution may have been limited by more recent researches, has a 

 real existence, it presents us with a condition of living matter the 

 most rudimental it is possible to conceive. No law of morphology 

 has as yet exerted itself in this formless slime. Even the simplest 

 individualization is absent. We have a living mass, but we. know not 

 where to draw its boundary-lines ; it is living matter, but we can 

 scarcely call it a living being. 



We are not, however, confined to Bathybius for examples of proto- 

 plasm in a condition of extreme simplicity. Haeckel has found, in- 

 habiting the fresh waters in the neighborhood of Jena, minute lumps 

 of protoplasm which, when placed under the microscope, were seen to 

 have no constant shape, their outline being in a state of perpetual 

 change, caused by the protrusion from various parts of their surface 

 of broad lobes and thick, finger-like projections, which, after remaining 

 visible for a time, would be withdrawn, to make their appearance again 

 on some other pai't of the surface. 



These changeable protrusions of its substance, without fixed posi- 

 tion or definite form, are eminently characteristic of protoplasm in 

 some of its simplest conditions. They have been termed " Pseudopo- 

 dia," and will frequently come before you in what I have yet to say. 



To the little protoplasmic lumps thus constituted Haeckel bas given 

 the name of Protamceba primitive/,. They may be compared to minute 

 detached pieces of Bathybius. He has seen them multiplying them- 

 selves by spontaneous division into two pieces, which, on becoming 

 independent, increase in size, and acquire all the characters of the 

 parent. 



Several other beings as simple as Protamceba have been described 

 by various observers, and especially by Haeckel, who brings the whole 

 together into a group to which he gives the name of Monera, sug- 

 gested by the extreme simplicity of the beings included in it. 



But we must now pass to a stage a little higher in the development 

 of protoplasmic beings. Widely distributed in the fresh and salt 

 waters of Britain, and probably of almost all parts of the world, are 

 small particles of protoplasm closely resembling the Protamceba just 

 described. Like it, they have no definite shape, and are perpetually 

 changing their form, throwing out and drawing in thick lobes and 

 finger-like pseudopodia, in which their body seems to flow away over 

 the field of the microscope. They are no longer, however, the homo- 

 geneous particle of protoplasm which forms the body of Protamceba. 

 Toward the center a small globular mass of firmer protoplasm has 



