MONERA 



globule of plasm {protomyxa aurantiaca) appeared first 

 in my Monograph on the Monera. Most of the organisms 

 which I comprised under this name exhibited the same 

 movements as true rhizopods (or sarcodina). It was 

 afterwards proved of some of them that there was a 

 nucleus hidden within the homogeneous particle of plasm, 

 and that, therefore, they must be regarded as real cells. 

 But this discovery was wrongly extended to the whole of 

 the monera, and the existence of unnucleated organisms 

 was denied altogether. Nevertheless, there are living 

 to-day several kinds of these organisms without organs, 

 some- of them being very widely distributed. The chief 

 examples are the chromacea and the bacteria, the former 

 with vegetal and the latter with animal metabolism (or 

 the former plasmodomous = plasma-forming, and the 

 latter plasmophagous = plasma-feeding) . On the ground 

 of this important chemical difference, I distinguished two 

 principal groups of the monera in my Systematic Phy- 

 togeny twenty years ago — the phytomonera and the 

 zoomonera, the former being unnucleated protophyta 

 and the latter unnucleated protozoa. 



Among living organisms the chromacea are certainly 

 the most primitive and the nearest to the oldest inhabi- 

 tants of the earth. Their simplest forms, the chroococ- 

 cacea, are nothing but small structureless particles of 

 plasm, growing by plasmodomism (formation of plasm) 

 and multiplying by simple cleavage as soon as their 

 growth passes a certain limit of in(ividual size. Many 

 of them are surrounded by a thin membrane or some- 

 what thicker gelatinous covering, and this circumstance 

 had prevented me for some time from counting the 

 chromacea as monera. However, I became convinced 

 afterwards that the formation of a protective cover of 

 this kind around the homogeneous particle of plasm may 

 indeed be regarded from the physiological stand-point as 

 a "purposive" structure, but at the same time may be 

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