52 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
able to assign them to the animal as it would be to assign 
them to the vegetable kingdom. Im any case we shall for 
the present be acting more cautiously and criticaliy if we 
comprise the still living Monera—whose number and dis- 
tribution is probably very great—as a special and inde- 
pendent class, contrasting them with the other classes of the 
kingdom Protista, as well as with the animal kingdom. 
Morphologically considered, the Monera—on account of the 
perfect homogeneity of the albuminous substance of their 
Fic. 8.—Protamceba primitiva, @ fresh-water Moneron, much enlarged. 
A. The entire Moneron with its form-changing processes. B. It begins to 
divide itself into two halves. C. The division of the two halves is com- 
pleted, and each now represents an independent individual. 
bodies, on account of their utter want of heterogeneous 
particles—are more closely connected with anorgana than 
with organisms, and evidently form the transition between 
the inorganic and organic world of bodies, as is necessitated 
by the hypothesis of spontaneous generation. I have 
described and given illustrations of the forms and vital 
phenomena of the still living Monera (Protamceba, Proto- 
genes, Protomyxa, etc.) in my Monograph of the Monera,” 
and have briefly mentioned the most important facts in 
the eighth chapter (vol. i. pp. 183-187). Therefore, only by 
way of a specimen, I here repeat the drawing of the fresh- 
