252 Dynamic Theory. 



plants, great numbers of bacteria. Observing their development to be 

 accompanied by a production or deposition of starch} 7 matter, he named 

 them Amylobacteria, or starch bacteria. There exists, he says, in the 

 bark of the common Elder and in that of plants belonging to the Night- 

 shade and Orpine families, a number of cells which are filled with little 

 tetahedrons having slightly unequal sides. It is these little tetahedrons 

 which he has seen converted by development into the starch bearing or- 

 ganisms. The tetahedron becomes elongated at one of its angles, and 

 produces a cylindrical outgrowth, the body of the tetahedron itself, 

 either retaining its shape or becoming rounded, remains as a bulb. 

 This growth all takes place within cell walls, it sometimes happening, 

 however, that the walls of two or more cells become ruptured and the 

 cells thrown together, forming a larger cavity ( Bastian ). 



The instability of the lowest forms of animal and vegetal life is 

 much greater than in the highest. The organism that is old is supposed 

 to be more conservative and fixed. This is undoubtedly true in the 

 main. The most recently acquired function or anatomical adjust- 

 ment is more easily lost or perverted than an older one. 



So Bastian argues that the extremely various forms taken by the 

 most minute and simple of both animal and vegetable organisms is 

 proof that they are recent in origin from the mineral kingdom and not 

 necessarily descended from the first organisms of their t} r pes that ever 

 came into existence. He says, "That some Moulds, Amoebae, and 

 other lowest organisms, should have lived in unbroken continuity 

 through pre-Silurian epochs amidst all the changes of the Carboniferous, 

 Triassic, Oolitic, Cretaceous, and more recent geologic ages, with that 

 mutability as an essential characteristic which they are now seen to dis- 

 play, and yet that they should have undergone little or no alteration, 

 seems to me almost too incredible to be seriously entertained. " This 

 point is well taken. It is extremely unlikely that Moulds, Amoebae, or 

 any other fungoid or parasitic forms now extant, depend for their 

 origin on an ancient ancestry like themselves. In fact, as has been 

 shown elsewhere, many of these parasitic forms are degenerate and 

 backsliding descendants of more or less ancient stock. They them- 

 selves may be, and probably are, comparatively recent in their present 

 condition. This condition is the result of new habits induced long after 

 the stock first originated. The organisms having these new habits of 

 parasitism and getting their living from other organisms, are in no ne- 

 cessity to be constant and stable in any particular except that of eating 

 and reproducing. As their eating is merely the absorption of food al- 

 read} r prepared for assimilation, and as the food is prepared through a 

 great variety of sources, from any of which the parasitic organism could 

 get it almost equally well, it follows that the organism may adopt vari- 



