The Microscope. 299 



So far as the monera is concerned, I have to say I cannot find it. 

 I have ransacked every likely place within my reach at all seasons 

 without encountering such a being. I do not presume to deny its 

 existence because I cannot find it, but I have a sufficiently wide 

 acquaintance with unicellular plants and animals, and with their 

 haunts, to justify me in doubting their individuality so far as my 

 own general conclusions are concerned. I do not, however, wish to 

 speak for others or to influence them in this matter. Both negative 

 and positive results of my studies compel me to doubt that monera, 

 in the sense it was first described, exists, as much as we all to-day 

 doubt the existence of bathybius. 



As soon as beings like our heteromita were discovered, there 

 arose the pertinent inquiry. Whence came they ? They had no visi- 

 ble ancestry. A few fragments of dried grass put into a clean 

 beaker with clear water, after a few hours brought forth living myriads. 

 Was it therefore true that these and others like them which peo- 

 ple every way -side ditch and stagnant pool, came into consciousness 

 and life from the dead by chemical and physical changes therein ? 

 It was not necessary to stand upon the belief of such an origin, and 

 yet it was in accordance with the known facts. While mankind was 

 ignorant of nature, fancy peopled jungle and forest with real and 

 unreal animals spontaneously generated. This, too, was logical. 

 Aristotle taught that this was one of the regular and natural modes 

 for the production of living forms. As knowledge advanced, the 

 number of species thus accounted for faded away. After the micro- 

 scope revealed a new world of minute existences, whose origin was 

 still more difficult to verify, the belief was again strong that these 

 were forms of life without parentage. But one after another of the 

 coarser forms was studied and proved to follow as definite a life 

 history as the largest animals. 



Recent progress in drawing hard and fast lines about the per- 

 sonality of the myriad species of minute organisms leads us to won- 

 der that so late as 1871-2, in the Proceedings of the American 

 Association for the advancement of Science, and also in the New 

 Haven Journal of Science and Art, same date, pp. 20 and 88, there 

 appeared a discussion seriously purporting to trace a sequence of 

 forms from protococcus or chlamydococcus to the spirally peduncu- 

 late vorticella, then oxytriella and perhaps rotifer. 



This is truly imaginative and poetic " science." The day for 

 such is almost, but not wholly, gone; but the "beginnings of life" 

 have served their time, let some other branch hereafter have the 

 honor. 



