The Microscope. 301 



like that of animals without chlorophyl or like that of plants supplied 

 with it y An eminent English scientist has suggested the possibility, 

 at least, that animals preceded plants. The following is a statement 

 of his views: " A conceivable state of things is that a vast amount 

 of albuminoids and other such compounds had been brought into 

 existence by those processes which culminated in the development 

 of the first protoplasm, and it seems likely enough that this first pro- 

 toplasm fed upon these antecedent steps in its own evolution, just as 

 animals feed on organic compounds at the present day. 



" At subse(iuent stages in the history of this archaic living matter, 

 chlorophyl was evolved, and the power of taking carbon from car- 

 bonic acid. The green plants were rendered possible by the evolu- 

 tion of chlorophyl, but, through what ancestral forms they took 

 origin, or whether more than once, i. e., by more than one branch, it 

 is difficult even to guess. The green Flagellate protozoa (volvoci- 

 nese) certainly furnish a connecting point by which it is possible to 

 link on the pedigree of the green plants to the primitive proto- 

 plasm. Thus we are led to entertain the paradox that, though the 

 animal is dependent on the plant for its food, yet the animal pre- 

 ceded the plant in evolution, and we look among the lower protozoa, 

 and not among the protophyta, for the nearest representatives of that 

 first protoplasm which was the result of a long and gradual evolu- 

 tion of chemical structure and the starting point of the development 

 of organic forms." 



To those who profess to believe in the production by chemical 

 evolution of protoplasm as a specific being reproducing itself, this 

 ingenious "paradox" is well nigh unavoidable. Chlorophyl is a 

 product of protoplasm, and could not well precede in evolution its 

 cause. But this, plausible as it is, depends on too many pure 

 assumptions. It is broached only because it seems to be a logical 

 sequence of a theory which can not be proved, and of which many 

 dispute even the probability. It must be assumed, first, that there 

 was, in the remote time of primordial life, produced by chemical 

 reactions alone, a mass of albuminoids from which protoplasm could 

 and did spring, and on which it could subsist until an oncoming 

 sense of hunger, as the supply of organic food produced without 

 antecedent life disappeared, suggested or caused or resulted in the 

 production of chlorophyl, by which means the supply was replen- 

 ished. Second, the nature and relation of the animate kingdoms, as 

 they now exist, were once different, or reversed. Neither of these 

 propositions is sustained by a particle of chemical, biological, or 



