from single-celled marine plants and animals to 

 serial sections of chordate embryos. A random 

 selection is almost sure to reveal some likely sub- 

 ject; for none is without interest; but now we are 

 concerned with what meets the eye, rather than the 

 mind. Here is a drawer bearing on its front the 

 word Protista — a name given to the group of one- 

 celled beings which, according to the taxonomists, 

 are in many instances neither distinctly plants nor 

 animals, but often betray the characteristics of 

 both, belonging, so to speak, to the borderland. 

 But as some undoubted plants and animals have 

 been found in this debatable region, the name now 

 stands as a synonym for all adult organisms con- 

 sisting of a single cell regardless of its kind. Let 

 us glance at some of these. 



Passing over those mounts in the A's which in- 

 clude that protozoon, often mistakenly celebrated 

 as the lowest form of life, the ameba, and over the 

 B's bearing the bacteria which are the most prob- 

 able candidates for that doubtful honor, and over 

 the C's containing those curious crescent-shaped 

 plants, closteria, I come to section D. From here I 

 abstract one of the thin glass slips which has a 

 label denoting it as a mount of Dinoflagellata, 



[113] 



