64 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
unanimously corroborate the fact that the whole miracle of 
vital phenomena and vital forms is traceable to the 
active agency of the formless albuminous combinations of — 
protoplasm, the Polythalamia alone would secure the 
triumph of that theory. For we may here at any moment, 
by means of the microscope, point out the wonderful fact, 
first established by Dujardin and Max Schulze, that the 
formless mucus of the soft plasma-body, this true “matter of 
life,’ is able to secrete the neatest, most regular, and most 
complicated structures. This secretive skill is simply a 
result of inherited adaptation, and by it we learn to under- 
stand how this same “ primzval slime”—this same proto- 
plasm—can produce in the bodies of animals and _ plants 
the most different and most complicated cellular forms. 
It is, moreover, a matter of special interest that the most 
ancient organism, the remains of which are found in a petri- 
fied condition, belongs to the Polythalamia. This organism is 
the “ Canadian Life’s-dawn ” (Hozoon canadense), which has 
already been mentioned, and which was found a few years 
ago in the Ottawa formation (in the deepest strata of the 
Laurentian system), on the Ottawa river in Canada. If we 
expected to find organic remains at all in these most ancient 
deposits of the primordial period, we should certainly look 
for such of the most simple Protista as are covered with a 
solid shell, and in the organization of which the difference 
between animal and plant is as yet not indicated. 
We know of but few species of the Sun-animaleules 
(Heliozoa), the second class of the Rhizopoda. One species is 
very frequently found in our fresh waters. It was observed 
even in the last century by a clergyman in Dantzig, Eichhorn 
by name, and it has been called after him, Actinosphzrium 
