350 THE BIOCOSMOS PARTICULARIZED. 



mals, those which are above the so-called 

 gastrula stage, and have attained the true 

 cell with its associative forms. (A completer 

 designation would be metaprotozoa.) In like 

 manner there should be a corresponding divi- 

 sion of Plants, the metaphyta (or better, 

 metaprotophyta), embracing all above the 

 protophyta. But this term, as far as our 

 knowledge goes, has not been used. 



But at present our task is to classify the 

 metazoa, which embrace quite all that we im- 

 mediately see of the animal world, the sphere 

 of its associated cellular life, its varied multi- 

 plicity of forms up to man. The problem of 

 classifying and naming these Forms has al- 

 ways been present to the observer, and such 

 attempts have their history, their consider- 

 able evolution, say from Aristotle down to our 

 own day. How shall the vast variety be in- 

 ter-related and by what criterion? Tribe, 

 class, order, family genera species are some 

 of the names by which the ever-widening 

 groups have been designated. Each individ- 

 ual animal is thus co-ordinated with every 

 other animal, from least to largest. We take 

 a common catfish and call it a vertebrate; 

 thus we have conjoined it in a group with 

 all the upper animals, and contrasted it with 

 all the lower. So in the one individual be- 

 fore us we are to see the whole animal crea- 



