REFERENCES AND QUOTATIONS. 321 



as yet ; but this much we may accept as certain, that the ma- 

 jority of the Protists that we still know, belong to that fourth 

 class which is incapable of development. The persistence of the 

 ephemeral creations of our second and third classes would natu 

 rally be secured only so long as circumstances continued favour- 

 able to their renewed primordial generation, but from the teleu- 

 logical standpoint the first class must be described as that of tlie 

 completely abortive attempts at creation." 



These, and similar more or less interesting fancies to which we 

 attribute no great importance, are all ilerived from Haeckel's 

 hypothesis of Autogony (" Generelle Morphologie der Organis- 

 men," 179 seq.), which he set up after his beautiful discoveries on 

 the simplest organisms now existing — the Monera and the Protists. 

 From this work we select the following passage : — " Doubtless we 

 must imagine the act of autogony, the first spontaneous origin of 

 the simplest organisms, to be quite similar to the act of crystal- 

 lization. In a fluid, holding in solution the chemical elements 

 composing the organism, in consequence of certain movements of 

 the various elements among themselves, certain points of attrac- 

 tion are formed, at which the atoms of the organogenetic ele- 

 ments (carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen) enter into such close 

 contact with one another that they unite in the formation of a 

 complex ternary or quaternary molecule. This primary group 

 of atoms — perhaps a molecule of albumen — now acts like the 

 analogous crystalline molecule, attracting the homogeneous atoms 

 dissolved in the mother wather ; and they now likewise coalesce 

 in the formation of similar molecules. The albuminous granule 

 thus grows and transforms itself into a homogeneous organic in- 

 dividual, a structureless moner or mass of plasma, like a Pro- 

 tamEba, &c. Owing to the easy divisibility of its substance, this 

 moner constantly tends towards the dissolution of its recenily 

 consolidated individuality, but when the constantly prepondera- 

 ting absorption of new substance outweighs the tendency to dis- 

 integration, it is able to preserve life by the excha:nge of material. 

 The homogeneous organic individual, or moner, grows by means 

 of imbibition (nutrition) only until the attractive power of the 

 centre no longer suffices to hold the whole mass together. In 



