64 THE HISTOEY OF CREATION. 



unanimously corroborate the fact that the whole mh-acle of 

 vital phenomena and vital forms is traceable to the 

 active agency of the formless albuminous combinations of 

 protoplasm, the Polythalamia alone would secure the 

 triumph of that theory. For we may here at any moment, 

 by means of the microscope, point out the wonderful fact, 

 first established by Dujardin and Max Sehulze, that the 

 formless mucus of the soft plasma-body, this true " matter of 

 life," is able to secrete the neatest, mast regular, and most 

 complicated structures. This secretive skill is simply a 

 result of inJoerited adaptation, and by it we learn to under- 

 stand how this same " primaeval slime " — this same proto- 

 plasm — can produce in the bodies of animals and plants 

 the most different and most complicated cellular forms. 



It is, moreover, a matter of special interest that the most 

 ancient organism, the remains of which are found in a petri- 

 fied condition, belongs to the Polythalamia. This organism is 

 the " Canadian Life's-dawn " {Eozoon canadense), which has 

 already been mentioned, and which was found a few years 

 ago in the Ottawa formation (in the deepest strata of the 

 Laurentian system), on the Ottawa river in Canada. If we 

 expected to find organic remains at all in these most ancient 

 deposits of the primordial period, we should certainly look 

 for such of the most simple Protista as are covered with a 

 solid shell, and in the organization of which the difference 

 between animal and plant is as yet not indicated. 



We know of but few species of the Sun-animalcules 

 (Heliozoa),the second class of the Rhizopoda. One species is 

 very frequentl}' found in our fresh waters. It was observed 

 even in the last century by a clergyman in Dantzig, Eichhorn 

 by name, and it has been called after him, Actinosphserium 



