PLEOMORPHISM OF THE SCHIZOPHYTA. 499 
The Pleomorphism of the Schizophyta. 
By 
E. Ray Lankester, Mi.A., LL.D., F.R.S., 
Jodrell Professor of Zoology 
in University College, London. 
Some students of natural history are content, when the 
explanations of phenomena which they have advanced and the 
arguments by which they have supported those explanations 
are appropriated by other observers, to remain silent, trusting 
to the justice of future generations for the vindication of their 
claims. So far as my own experience goes, an active observer 
who should trouble himself to obtain honest treatment from all 
his contemporaries in regard to the significance of his published 
writings, might abundantly employ the latter half of his life in 
struggling with new writers for that just recognition of his 
efforts in earlier years in advancing the knowledge of this or 
that subject, which is the one reward desired above all others 
by those who have not attained to the heights of philosophic 
contempt for the regard and sympathy of fellow-labourers. I 
do not intend to largely employ my leisure in this pursuit, 
but there is one subject on which I am anxious once for all to 
establish the significance of my observations and reasonings 
published twelve years ago in relation to similar views advanced 
and accepted at this moment. 
That subject is what is now spoken of as the pleomorphism - 
of the Schizophyta or Bacteria. 
The view that the genera then recently established by Cohn, 
viz. Micrococcus, Bacterium, Bacillus, Vibrio, Spirillum, and 
Leptothrix, are form-phases, or variations of growth of a 
number of “ Protean ” species of Bacteria, each of which may 
