6l2 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



been founded, and even in some instances those of its 

 orders. . . . The ordinary notion of species^ as assem- 

 blages of individuals marked out from each other by 

 definite characters that have been genetically trans- 

 mitted from original prototypes similarly distinguished, 

 is quite inapplicable to this group; since, even 

 if the limits of such assemblages were extended so as 

 to include what would elsewhere be accounted genera, 

 they would still be found so intimately connected by 

 gradational links that definite lines of demarcation 

 could not be drawn between them. . . The only natu- 

 ral classification of the vast aggregate of diversified 

 forms which this group contains,, will be one which 

 ranges them according to their direction and degree of 

 divergence from a small number of principal family- 

 types V 



These conclusions to which Dr. Carpenter has ar- 

 rived, are also thoroughly in accordance with the views 

 of his coadjutors, Messrs. Parker and Rupert Jones; and 

 they are strikingly similar to the conclusions which 

 Cohn was compelled to adopt 2 after an examination of 

 the products to which Protococctis gave rise comprising 

 as they did the most widely differing forms of Phytozoa, 

 which were actually seen by him to be derived from one 

 another by direct processes of transformation. If, there- 

 fore, the mere comparison of the separate forms them- 



1 Carpenter's 'Introduction to the Study of the Foraminifera,' 1862, 

 p. x. 



2 See Appendix D, p. Ixxxiii. 



