1885.] 
257 
The Lesson of the Unnucleated Cell. 
microscopic skeletons attains a depth of several hundred 
yards. In the Tripoli of Bilin, Bohemia, Schleiden calcu- 
lated a cubic inch contains forty-one millions of animalcules. 
The schists of Bilin have a surface of 8 or io square 
leagues, and are from 2 to 15 feet thick. The Infusoria 
enter not alone into the composition of porous rocks, but are 
met with in silex; red rock salt owes its tinge to microscopic 
animals, and even the red of the carnelian is due to the pre- 
sence of Infusoria. Many more are the instances which 
may be adduced, and so astounding are the inferences that 
it might almost be asserted that the rocks, inorganic 
formations, are due to monocellular creatures and their allies. 
Polyps and sponges have lent their aid. The more deeply 
the question is examined the more far-reaching is the 
seeming that all natural phenomena, organic and inorganic, 
are but the results of the living energy which first concreted 
and then possessed the unnucleated monad. 
It must be assumed there is but one law of life. Because 
the protozoon propagates by division it is said that as there 
is no birth there can be no death (unless by casualty). 
Mobius has shown that changes in the body of the creature 
ensue before fission : no sufficient observation has been 
shown by which would be excluded the idea of conjunctive 
generation ; nor that the creatures are not hermaphrodite, 
and have organs of self-impregnation, or that the fission — 
the resulting reproduction— is due to such aCtion. Excepting 
that the creatures divide and present a matured living pro- 
totype, there is no difference in their multiplication than in 
that of other creatures ; the young of the Vertebrates is in 
faCt an aCt of fission of the parent perfected by growth, and 
every after generation : but a perpetuation of the first fission, 
or birth, and the remotest descendant, is as much the pre- 
sentment of the original ancestor as that the present 
protozoon is of its Laurentian parent ; life from the egg is 
also in parallel. 
The one thing, so far as organic nature is concerned, is 
that the immortality is alone of the life energy, for ever 
existing and for ever aCting ; exudations and carpaces strew 
the face of the Globe, and have their presence in the rocks 
formed from the carcases of those condensations of sub- 
stances which the life energy has collected and used, and 
which, when they have served their use, have been thrust 
aside and become the bones and ribs of inorganic forma- 
tions, perhaps again to be arrested in their apparent inertia, 
again to be presented as organic forms, rehabilitated by the 
ever present and ever aCtive life energy. 
