ANIMAL LIFE GENERATION. 349 



lular material takes place the bifurcation into 

 Plant and Animal ,each of which moves out 

 of this common starting-point on its own 

 line. The biologist is still observing minute 

 organisms which seem to be almost neutrals 

 in this no-man's-land (see account of the 

 Myxomecetes on a former page). The poten- 

 tial plant-animal (phytozoon) now splits, or 

 rather unfolds into its two possibilities, one 

 of which we may call the first plant (proto- 

 phyte), and the other the first animal (proto- 

 zoon). Samples of each sort may be taken 

 in the Bacterion and in the Amoeba. 



We have now gotten our first Plant and first 

 Animal, and have reached the epochal fork- 

 ing of all organic life into its two ascending 

 lines of living individual forms, each of which 

 henceforth moves on its own distinct path. 

 The stages of this primordial Earth-life are, 

 first, protoplasmic, and, secondly, phytozoic, 

 which last stage differentiates into Plant and 

 Animal. Already we have traced the evolu- 

 tion of the early Plant (protophyte), through 

 its various gradations to its highest forms. 

 Now the same thing is to be done for the early 

 Animal (protozoon). But just here is the 

 need for a ^*ast new class, the third, embrac- 

 ing all the animal forms after the protozoon. 

 Naturalists often give to this class the name 

 of metazoa, which include all the higher ani- 



