184 THE HISTORY OF CHEATIOK. 



posed of organs, of various parts, which fit into one anothef 

 and "work together (as do the different parts of an artificial 

 machine), in order to produce the action of the whole,. 

 During late years we have become acquainted with Monera, 

 organisms which are, in fact, not composed of any organs at 

 all, but consist entirely of shapeless, simple, homogeneous 

 matter. The entire body of one of these Monera, during 

 life, is nothing more than a shapeless, mobile, little lump of 

 mucus or slime, consisting of an albuminous combination 

 of carbon. Simpler or more imperfect organisms we cannot 

 possibly conceive. 



The first complete observations on the natural history 

 of a Moneron (Protogenes primordialis) were made by me 

 at Nice, in 1864. Other very remarkable Monera I 

 examined later (18G6) in Lanzarote, one of the Canary 

 Islands, and in 1867 in the Straits of Gibraltar. The com- 

 plete histoiy of one of these Monera, the orange -red 

 Protomyxa aurantiaca, is represented in Plate I, and its 

 explanation is given in the Appendix. I have found 

 some curious Monera also in the North Sea, off the 

 Norweo'ian coast, near Bero-en. Cienkowski has described 

 (1865) an interesting Moneron from fresh waters, under the 

 name of Vaonpyrella. But perhaps the most remarkable of 

 all Monera was discovered by Huxley, the celebrated 

 English zoologist, and called Bathyhius Hceckelii, " Bathy- 

 bius " means, living in the deep. This wonderful organism 

 lives in immense depths of the ocean, which are over 

 12,000 — indeed, in some parts 24,000 feet below the surface, 

 and which have become known to us within the last ten 

 years, through the laborious investigations made by the 

 English. There, among the numerous Polythalamia and 



