The Morphology of Cosmobia 367 



Greek seems to lie in the formation of a neuter noun, /3tov, a living 

 thing, from the abstract masculine, /8ios, life; a formation which is 

 abundantly supported by analogy, and fully in accordance with the 

 genius of the language.* Another possible criticism of the word lies 

 in the fact that the word Kdo-/Aos, order, has been commonly used, even 

 by the Greeks themselves, in its derived meaning of the Universe. The 

 literal meaning is, however, exactly what I desire, and in addition to 

 being euphonious and simple, it readily admits of the adjective form 

 CosMOBioTic and is applicable to plants as well as to animals if desired. 

 Whether such forms exist among plants I cannot say, but, in order 

 to be analogous, they must belong to the sexual generation and hence 

 be looked for among the lower Cryptogams.^ 



The theory which I have here set forth, and which I may call the 

 theory of CosmoMa, is not wholly a new one, since the recognition of 

 certain series of monsters with imperceptible gradations between them 

 has been pointed out by teratologists for a long time. What may be 

 considered new is, first, the recognition of the relationship between the 

 symmetrical anomalies on either side of a normal being; the inclusion 

 among Cosmobia of certain types of secondarily deformed and misshapen 

 monsters resulting from abnormal conditions during development; and, 

 thirdly, the possibility of considering in a single series both these forms 

 with less and those with more than the normal number of parts, includ- 

 ing also normal beings. Whether either of these points may be in accord 

 with the actual facts can only be shown through much investigation of 

 the structure of all sorts of Cosmobia, together with experimental work 

 on the artificial production of these forms, a field which, though often 

 tried, has until recently yielded but little.® At the best my theory can be 



*We have already the exactly analogous word Rhizobia, the organisms 

 living in the root nodules of leguminous plants. 



"The various sorts of double or twinned flowers, fruits, and other parts of 

 plants are phenomena of quite a different kind from cosmobiotic organisms, 

 since the appearance is localized and affects certain parts only. These may 

 perhaps be compared to the doubling of fingers, limbs, or other lateral parts 

 among animals, which, although they may be germinal in origin, do not 

 modify the entire organism. 



'As far as can be learned from figures ana descriptions of artificiall pyro- 

 duced monsters, they all seem to be merely cases of deformation, with no 

 genuine Cosmobion among them. In the case of the reported artificial produc- 

 tion of "double monsters," lilje those claimed by Panum or Gerlach, it is 

 probable that these were simply natural cases of monsters, quite frequent 

 among birds, and not due to the experiments. Experiments thus far seem to 



