PHYLOGENETIC POSITION OF THE BACTERIA* 
HitpA HempL HELLER 
The subject of the phylogenetic position of the bacteria has 
been approached by many students. Early workers came to no 
more diverse conclusions than do modern ones. Some investigators, 
for example NAGELI (24) and GérscuiicH (14), have placed the 
bacteria with the fungi, while Conn (9), Micua (22), and SACHS 
(26) placed them with the algae. The early workers who assigned 
the bacteria to the fungi did so because both fungi and bacteria 
lack chlorophyll, and may thus be regarded as similarly degener- 
ate algae, and because there are genera such as Corynebacterium, 
Actinomyces, Streptothrix, and Oidium, that may well be regarded 
as transitional forms. Classifiers of the fungi have not sufficiently 
emphasized the fact that in a group where chlorophyll is absent 
there is no compelling reason for presuming that the simpler forms, 
the bacteria, were descended from the higher ones, as the workers 
thought who considered them as directly descended from the algae. 
Even De Bary (1), although he uses NAGELI’s name “Schizomy- 
cetes”’ (fission fungi) for the bacteria, insists that they are not 
fungi, nor closely related to or descended from fungi. 
The reason for classing the bacteria as a subordinate group of 
the algae has usually been the exceedingly close morphological 
resemblance of the higher bacteria to the blue-green algae (Cyano- 
phyceae or Myxophyceae). Coun was the first to emphasize the 
relationship between these groups. The Cyanophyceae were long 
thought to be the most simple autotrophic forms. More modern 
systematists have separated the blue-green algae from those with - 
sexual reproduction, and have united them with the bacteria. 
Thus ENGLER (12), in his second phylum Schizophyta, included 
only the two classes Schizomycetes and Schizophyceae; WARMING 
(28) made a similar division of his class Schizophyta; while 
BEssEY (3) in his phylum Myxophyceae, class Archiplastideae 
*From the George Williams Hooper — for Medical Research, Univer- 
sity of California Medical School, San Francis 
Botanical Gazette, vol. 72} [390 
