HISTORY 



4'5 



This definition; as we have seen, excludes Metazoa (including 

 Mesozoa, Vol. II. p. 92) sharply from Protozoa, but leaves an un- 

 certain boundary on the botanical side; and, as systematists 

 share with nations the desire to extend their sphere of influence, 

 we shall here follow the. lead of other zoologists and include many 

 beings that every botanist would claim for his own realm. Our 

 present knowledge of the Protozoa has indeed been - largely 

 extended by botanists,^ while the study of protoplasmic physiology 

 has only passed from their fostering care into the domain of 

 General Biology within the last decade. The study of the 

 Protozoa is little more than two centuries old, dating from the 

 school of microscopists of whom the Dutchman Leeuwenhoek is 

 the chief representative : and we English may feel a just pride in 

 the fact that his most important publications are to be found in 

 the early records of our own Eoyal Society. 



Baker, in the eighteenth century, and the younger Wallich, 

 Carter, Dallinger and Drysdale, Archer, Saville Kent, Lankester, 

 and Huxley, in the last half-century, are our most illustrious names. 

 In France, Joblot, almost as an amateur, like our own Baker, 

 flourished in the early part of the eighteenth century. Dujardin 

 in the middle of the same century by his study of protoplasm, or 

 sarcode as lie termed it, did a great work in laying the founda- 

 tions of our present ideas, while Balbiani, Georges Pouchet, 

 Fabre-Domergue, Maupas, L^ger, and Labbe in Prance, have 

 worthily continued and extended the Gallic traditions of exact 

 observation and careful deduction. Otto Priedrich Miiller, the 

 Dane, in the eighteenth century, was a pioneer in the exact 

 study and description of a large number of forms of these, 

 as of other microscopic forms of life. The Swiss collaborators, 

 Claparede and Lachmann, in the middle of the nineteenth 

 century, added many facts and many descriptions ; and illus- 

 trated them by most valuable figures of the highest merit 

 from every point of view. Germany, with her large population 

 of students and her numerous universities, has given many names 

 to our list ; among these, Ehrenberg and von Stein have added 



being reserved for a similarly specialised group of cells or tissues in a Metazoon or 

 Metaphyte. We do not consider that this distinction warrants tlie introduction of 

 new words into the terminology of general Zoology, however convenient these may 

 be in an essay on the particular question involved. 



1 This has been especially tlie case with the Flagellata, the Proteomy.xa, and 

 the Mycetozoa. 



