72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tids or individuals of the first order, identical with them, were de- 

 termined by Haeckel phylogenetically, to the effect that cytods and 

 cells must be distinguished as two essentially different orders of for- 

 mation ; i, e., that cells were phylogenetically produced in a second- 

 ary manner from homogeneous cytods by means of the secretion of a 

 germ by the protoi>lasm. This distinction is important for the reason 

 that many of the lowest orders of organisms have no germ in the 

 protoplasm ; such is the case especially with the moners. These sim- 

 plest of organisms were first discovered by Haeckel in 1864, and de- 

 scribed by him in 1868 in his " Monographic der Moneren." Cienkow- 

 ski and Huxley also made valuable investigations of various moners. 

 The latter discovered in 1868 the famous bathybius, a very remark- 

 able kind of moner, which at immense depths covers the bottom of 

 the sea in immeasurable numbers, and which consists of formless and 

 variable protoplasm tissues of different sizes. 



Among the moners investigated by Cienkowski, the most interest- 

 ing are the vamj>ire-cells, which are formless little bodies of proto- 

 plasm that bore into vegetable cells by means of their pointed pseu- 

 dopodia, kill them, and absorb tlie protoplasm tliey find in them. On 

 the basis of tliese discoveries Haeckel elaborated his plastid theory 

 and carbon theory, which give the extreraest philosophical conse- 

 quences of the protoplasm theory. 



In England the monistic philosophy of jjrotoplasm has received 

 the most weighty support from Huxley, whose "Protoplasm, or the 

 Physical Basis of Life" (1868), put it in its true light, and called 

 forth numerous writings for and against it. One of the most recent 

 treatises in favor of it is that of James Ross "On Protoplasm*' (1874). 

 Probably the name of plasson will be given to the primordial, per- 

 fectly structureless, and homogeneous protoplasm of the moners and 

 other cytods, in contradis.tinction to the protoplasm of germ-contain- 

 ing cells, which are produced only subsequently, by the differentiation 

 of an internal nucleus and external protoplasm by the plasson bodies 

 of moners. Edouai-d van Beneden especially calls for this distinction 

 in his "Recherches sur revolution des gregarines;" and Haeckel has 

 adduced new facts in favor of it in his "Monograpphie der Kalk- 

 schwiirame." For the theory of " primordial generation," the spontane- 

 ous generation of the first vitality on earth, the distinction is of special 

 importance, as the first organisms thus produced could have been only 

 structureless specks of plasson, like the bathybius and other moners. 

 The great theoretical difficulties formerly in the way of the theory of 

 primordial or spontaneous generation have been removed by the dis- 

 covery of the moners and the establishment of the plastid theory. As 

 the protoplasm of the bathybius is not yet as much as individualized, 

 while in the case of other moners there are individual lumps of constant 

 sizes, it follows that the moners are to be regarded as the natural 

 bodies which effect the transition from inorganic to organic Nature. 



