ON THE RADIOLARIA AS AN ORDER OF THE PROTOZOA. 271 
growing far too prevalent with a certain class of naturalists) to 
assign a place in this already heterogeneous sub-kingdom, to 
every previously unknown microscopic structure that oceanic or 
fresh- water sources reveal to us; inasmuch as this system is 
already reducing the study of the lower forms of animal life to 
a state of chaos from which it will, probably, take years to re- 
cover. This must, I think, become manifest to anyone fairly 
versed in the literature of the subject, who will unprejudicedly 
examine Mr. Mivart’s memoir, keeping constantly in recollec- 
tion that the author is all the while dilating on observations 
made wholly by others ; and that the constant appeal, for pur- 
poses of diagnosis, to the most immaterial differences ; the as 
constant substitution of assumed for observed facts ; the bolster- 
ing-up of most indefinite 44 definitions ” by an array of qualify- 
ing and relative terms, until at last they may be made to mean 
anything or nothing; the creation of a ponderous, and not 
unfrequently not very classical nomenclature ; and, lastly, the 
inexcusable practice of re-naming organisms, or parts of organ- 
isms, already named, described, and even figured by prior 
observers, are. in the main, the work of a school of Evolu- 
tionists who might with reason have been expected to utilize 
the motley Radiolarian assemblage, as being of all others the 
best-fitted for the illustration of their doctrine. Yet. incredible 
though it may seem, the staunchest believer in 44 Fixity of 
Species,” if he happened to be unaware of the extent of variation 
to which the Rhizopods generally are liable, could hardly have 
gone further in species-manufacture. And to make the matter 
still more wonderful, whilst Mr. Mivart tells us, in highly 
eulogistic terms, that Haeckel’s 44 Die Radiolarien ” contains a 
description of a multitude of new genera and species (Memoir, 
p. 139) ; we are gravely informed by Sir Wyville Thomson that, 
44 the Radiolaria form a class of the somewhat negative sub- 
kingdom Protozoa, which is retained for the reception of those 
animals of comparatively simple structure, such as the Infu- 
soria (!), &C., WHOSE RELATIONS WE CANNOT VERY FULLY MAKE 
out” (“ The Atlantic,” Yol. i. p. 231); so that here we have 
the writer who, naturally enough, is regarded just now as the 
latest and most experienced authority on the Radiolaria , openly 
avowing that he regards them as the scientific waste-paper bag 
to which may be advantageously consigned all manner of crea- 
tures belonging to the lower forms of life of which we know 
nothing ! 
But it is for Mr. Mivart, the author of 44 Contemporary 
Evolution in 1876,” to reconcile, if possible, the charge therein 
brought by him against Haeckel, with the following panegyric 
on Haeckel’s monograph 44 Die Radiolarien,” pronounced by Mr. 
Mivart, the author of 44 Notes touching Recent Researches on the 
