96 HAECKEL 



of human art- work, for there is nothing else in tl 

 whole of nature with which we may compare ther 

 The radiolarian, therefore, is an animal of tl 

 utmost simplicity of bodily frame that, by son 

 force or other, creates the highest and mo 

 varied beauty that we find anywhere in natur 

 living or dead, below the level of human art. 



Haeckel's good genius brought him to these radii 

 laria. Until the winter of 1859-1860 he knew vei 

 little about them. When a radiolarian dies i 

 soft body naturally f melts away and perishe 

 But the art-work of its life, the star or shield i 

 flinty matter, remains ; it either sinks to the bottoi 

 or is washed ashore, where numbers of them ma 

 accumulate. If a pinch of mud or sand from tl 

 shore is put under the microscope the observer wi 

 see lovely artistic fragments, and ask what is tt 

 meaning of the miracle. Ehrenberg, the venerab] 

 Berlin micros copist, was the first to have the 63 

 perience. He was not in the habit of going to th 

 sea himself, but had specimens sent to him, an 

 found in them shells of the radiolaria. Thoug 

 they were so small, their artistic quality seeme 

 to him to be so great that he assumed the 

 were built by very advanced animals of the stai 

 fish or sea-urchin type. That there were un 

 cellular protozoa with a simple gelatinous bod 

 and no higher organs he stoutly denied, and h 

 had the support of his leading contemporarie 

 everywhere. But his colleague, Johannes Miille] 

 who fished in the sea himself, came across livin 

 specimens in the Mediterranean in the first ha! 



