52 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



able to assign them to the animal as it would be to assign 

 them to the vegetable kingdom. In any case we shall foi* 

 the present be acting more cautiously and critically if we 

 comprise the still living Monera — whose number and dis- 

 tribution is probably very great — as a special and inde- 

 pendent class, contrasting them with the other classes of the 

 kingdom Protista, as well as with the animal kingdom. 

 Morphologically considered, the Monera — on account of the 

 perfect homogeneity of the albuminous substance of their 



Fig. 8. — Protamoeba primitiva, a fresh-water Moneron, much enlarged. 

 A. The entire Moneron -with its form-changing processes. B. It begins to 

 di%-ide itself into two halves. C. The division of the two halves is com. 

 pleted, and each now represents au independent individual. 



bodies, on account of their utter want of heterogeneous 

 particles — are more closely connected with anorgana than 

 with organisms, and evidently form the transition between 

 the inorganic and organic world of bodies, as is necessitated 

 by the hyj^othesis of spontaneous generation. 1 have 

 described and given illustrations of the forms and vital 

 phenomena of the still living Monera (Protamoeba, Proto- 

 genes, Protomyxa, etc.) in my Monograph of the Monera,^^ 

 and have briefly mentioned the most important facts in 

 the eighth chapter (vol. i. pp. 183-187). Therefore, only by 

 way of a specimen, I here repeat the drawing of the fresh- 



