Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/664

644 of different morphological constituents, of 'organs;' but, on the contrary, as all the molecules of the structureless carbon compound of the living albumen of which they consist are equally capable of performing the various life-functions, it is plain that the idea of an organism can be educed only dynamically or physiologically from vital movement, and not statically or morphologically from the composition of the body out of 'organs.' "

For some years after this the circle of our experiences with these strange "organisms without organs" was considerably widened. During my voyage to the Canary Islands in 1866-'67 I very naturally directed my whole attention to these organisms, and was so fortunate as to discover many new forms of Moneres. On the white calcareous shells of a remarkable Cephalopod (Spirula Peronii), found in thousands on the coasts of the Canaries, I have sometimes noticed numerous little red points, which under the magnifying-glass looked like ornamental stars, and, when highly magnified, like orange-red protoplasmic disks or globules, from the circumference of which radiated numerous tree-shaped filaments, with branches. Closer observation showed that these (comparatively colossal) protoplasmic bodies, too, were unnucleated and structureless, and that they propagated after the same manner as Protomonas, the globular, encysted body breaking up into a great number of little fragments. To this new genus of Moneres I gave the name of Protomyxa aurantiaca, and it is figured in Plate I. of the "Natural History of Creation." I then, during the same year (1867), found a like magnificent Moneres form in the mud of the harbor of Puerto del Arrecife, the port-town of the island of Lanzarote, and to it gave the name of Myxastrum radians. Its distinguishing mark is this, that the fragments or spores into which the globular body breaks up in the act of propagation arrange themselves in lines radiating from the centre of the globule, and exude spindle-shaped, siliceous envelopes, from which the young Moneres afterward drops out.

On the strength of all these observations, I, in 1868, published in the Jenaische Zeitschrlft für Naturwissenschaft an extended "Monograph of the Moneres" (vol. iv., p. 64, Plates II. and III.). In this monograph both my own observations and those of others are set forth at length and discussed. At that time the number of known genera of Moneres was seven. By later observations it has been increased to sixteen, as is stated by me in my "Supplement to the Monograph of the Moneres" (Jenaische Zeitschrift für Naturwissenschaft, 1877, vol. vi., p. 23). The differences between these Moneres come simply from the fact that the soft, slimy mass expands and moves in different forms, and that the asexual propagation (by division, spore formation, etc.) takes place in different ways.

II. History of Bathybius.—The great interest possessed by the Moneres morphologically as well as physiologically was further heightened when, in 1868, the foremost zoölogist of England, the celebrated