'/jS THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



THE CHAIN OF THE ANIMAL ANCESTORS, OR THE 

 SERIES OF THE PROGENITORS, OF MAN. 



(Comp. Ch. XX., XXI. ; Plate XIV. and p. 22). 



FIRST HALF OF THE SERIES OF THE ANCESTORS OF MAN. 

 INVERTEBRATE ANCESTORS OF MAN (Prochordata). 



First Stage : Monera. 

 The most ancient ancestors of Man, as of all other 

 organisms, were living creatures of the simplest kind 

 imaginable, organisms without organs, like the still 

 living Monera. They consisted of simple, homogeneous, 

 structureless and formless little lumps of mucous or 

 albuminous matter (protoplasm), like the still living Pro- 

 tamoeba primitiva. (Compare vol. i. p. 186, Fig. 1.) The forrti 

 value of these most ancient ancestors of man was not even 

 equal to that of a cell, but merely that of a cytod (compare 

 vol. i. p. 347) ; for, as in the case of all Monera, the little lump 

 of protoplasm did not as yet possess a cell-kernel. The first 

 of these Monera originated in the beginning of the Lauren- 

 tian period by spontaneous generation, or archigony, out of 

 so-called "iuorganic combinations," namely, out of simple 

 combinations of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen. 

 The assumption of this spontaneous generation, that is, of 

 a mechanical origin of the first organisms from inorganic 

 matter, has been proved in our thirteenth chapter to be 

 a necessary hypothesis. (Compare vol. i. p. 338.) A direct 



