Page:The Last link.djvu/117

Rh quarters, Haeckel bore the brunt of almost endless attacks, and had to write polemical essays. The result has been that friend and foe alike are now working on the lines which he has laid down; most of the ideas which he was the first to conceive, and to formulate by inventing a scientific terminology for them, have become important branches, or even disciplines, of the science.

Most morphologists of the younger generations now take these terms for granted, without remembering the name of their founder. It is, therefore, perhaps not quite superfluous to mention some of them:

Phylum, or stem, the sum total of all those organisms which have probably descended from one common lower form. He distinguished eight such phyla—Protozoa, Cœlenterata, Helminthes or Vermes, Tunicata, Mollusca, Articulata, and Vertebrata. The phyla are more or less analogous to 'super-classes,' large branches or 'circles,' or principal groups of other zoologists.