184 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
posed of organs, of various parts, which fit into one another 
and work together (as do the different parts of an artificial 
machine), in order to produce the action of the whole. 
During late years we have become acquainted with Monera, 
organisms which are, in fact, not composed of any organs at’ 
all, but consist entirely of shapeless, simple, homogeneous 
matter. The entire body of one of these Monera, during 
life, is nothing more than a shapeless, mobile, little lump of 
mucus or slime, consisting of an albuminous combination 
of carbon. Simpler or more imperfect organisms we cannot 
possibly conceive. 
The first complete observations on the natural history 
of a Moneron (Protogenes primordialis) were made by me 
at Nice, in 1864 Other very remarkable Monera I 
examined later (1866) in Lanzarote, one of the Canary 
Islands, and in 1867 in the Straits of Gibraltar. The com- 
plete history of one of these Monera, the orange-red 
Protomyxa aurantiaca, is represented in Plate I, and its 
explanation is given in the Appendix. I have found 
some curious Monera also in the North Sea, off the 
Norwegian coast, near Bergen. Cienkowski has described 
(1865) an interesting Moneron from fresh waters, under the 
name of Vampyrella. But perhaps the most remarkable of 
all Monera was discovered by Huxley, the celebrated 
English zoologist, and called Bathybius Heeckelat. “ Bathy- 
bius” means, living in the deep. This wonderful organism 
lives in immense depths of the ocean, which are over 
12,000—indeed, in some parts 24,000 feet below the surface, 
and which have become known to us within the last ten 
years, through the laborious investigations made by the 
English. There, among the numerous Polythalamia and 
