THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



and the first volume of my Systematic Phytogeny (1894), 

 I attempted to sketch in detail the stages of the process 

 to which I give the name of archigony. I distinguished 

 two principal stages — autogony (the formation of the first 

 living matter from inorganic nitrogenous carbon-com- 

 pounds) and plasmogony (the formation of the first indi- 

 vidualized plasm; the earliest organic individuals in the 

 form of monera). In more recent efforts I have made 

 use of the important results reached by Nageli (1884) 

 in his investigations of the same subject. In regard to 

 some important points relating to the chemico-physical 

 part of the question, Nageli has, in his Mechanico- 

 physiological Theory of Evolution (chapter ii.), gone more 

 into the details of the process of archigony. To the 

 earliest living things, which were formed by "unicellu- 

 lar organization" of the plasm out of simple inorganic 

 compounds, he gives the name of prohia or probionta, 

 and thinks that these had an even simpler structure 

 than my monera. This view seems to rest on a mis- 

 understanding. Nageli does not strictly follow my 

 definition, "organisms without organs" (that is to say, 

 structureless living particles of plasm without morpho- 

 logical differentiation) , but he has in mind the individual 

 rhizopod-like organisms which I had at first described as 

 monera — protamceba, protogenes, protoinyxa, etc. In my 

 present view the chromacea, or plasmodomous phyto- 

 monera, are rauch more important than these plasmoph- 

 agous zoomonera. It is curious that Nageli does not 

 make thorough use of their primitive organization for 

 the establishment of his theory, although he has had the 

 great merit of describing these most primitive of all 

 living organisms as unicellular algae (1842). As a matter 

 of fact, the simplest chromacea (chroococcus and related 

 forms) approach so closely to his hypothetical probia or 

 probionta that the only things we can regard as the 

 rudiments of organization in the chroococcacea are the 



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