PRO-MORPHOLOGY OF PROTISTA, 7! 
be pointed out in most organisms, both in the general form 
of the body and in the form of the individual parts. This 
ideal fundamental form, or type, which is determined by the 
number, position, combination, and differentiation of the 
component parts, stands in just the same relation to the real 
organic form as the ideal geometrical fundamental form of 
crystals does to their imperfect real form. In most bodies 
and parts of the bodies of animals and plants this fundamental 
form is a pyramid. It is a regular pyramid in the so-called 
“reoular radiate” forms, and an irregular pyramid in the 
more highly differentiated, so-called “bilaterally symmetri- 
cal” forms. (Compare the plates in the first volume of my 
General Morphology, pp. 556-558.) Among the Protista this 
pyramidal type, which prevails in the animal and vegetable 
kingdom, is on the whole rare, and instead of it we have 
either quite irregular (amorphous) or more simple, regular 
geometrical types; especially frequent are the sphere, the 
cylinder, the ellipsoid, the spheroid, the double cone, the cone, 
the regular polygon (tetrahedron, hexhahedron, octahedron, 
dodecahedron, icosahedron), ete. All the fundamental forms 
of the pro-morphological system, which are of a low rank in 
that system, prevail in the Protista. However, in many 
Protista there occur also the higher, regular, and bilateral 
types, fundamental forms which predominate in the animal 
and vegetable kingdoms. In this respect some of the Protista 
are frequently more closely allied to animals (as the 
Acyttaria), others more so to plants (as the Radiolaria). 
With regard to the palwontological development of the 
kingdom Protista, we may form various, but necessarily very 
unsafe, genealogical hypotheses. Perhaps the individual 
classes of the kingdom are independent tribes, or phyla, 
