72 EVOLUTION AND THE 
‘life,’ the truth of which is deemed to have been 
established by previously-recorded experiments. 
-These myriads of lowest forms of life, multiplying 
only by processes of fission and gemmation, con- 
stitute an inextricably-tangled plexus of more or less 
convertible animal or vegetal forms (corresponding 
pretty closely with the Protista of Professor Haeckel) 
which, though often reappearing, are for the most 
part evanescent and transitory states, either of com- 
paratively new-born living matter, or of portions of 
matter which have become individualized by hetero- 
genetic processes occurring in the substance of the 
higher forms of life. But, howsoever derived, such 
forms constitute a vast assemblage of ‘Ephemero- 
morphs’ amongst which Heterogenesis occurs almost 
as frequently as Homogenesis.* 
Gradually, however, the first traces of those pro- 
cesses of ‘conjugation’ and of internal gemmation 
begin to manifest themselves, which subsequently be- 
come perfected into ‘sexual’ modes of reproduction. 
And when animal and vegetal organisms mani- 
festing that cyclical homogenesis known as ‘alternate 
generation,’ appear upon the scene, and with them 
those simpler allies (formed from large germs), which 
* The song of the Ephemeromorphs might be, in the words of Ovid, 
“Corpora vertuntur ; nec quod fuimusve, sumusve, 
Cras erimus.” 
