. The history of creation; or, The development of the earth and its inhabitants by the action of natural causes. A popular exposition of the doctrine of evolution in general, and of that of Darwin, Goethe, and Lamarck in particular. microscopiccells, which either live singly (Fig. 14), or united in greatnumbers, and occur either attached to objects, or glide andcreep about in a peculiar manner. Their soft cell substance,which is of a characteristic brownish yellow colour, isalways enclosed by a solid and hard flinty shell, possessingthe neatest and most varied forms. This flinty covering isope
. The history of creation; or, The development of the earth and its inhabitants by the action of natural causes. A popular exposition of the doctrine of evolution in general, and of that of Darwin, Goethe, and Lamarck in particular. microscopiccells, which either live singly (Fig. 14), or united in greatnumbers, and occur either attached to objects, or glide andcreep about in a peculiar manner. Their soft cell substance,which is of a characteristic brownish yellow colour, isalways enclosed by a solid and hard flinty shell, possessingthe neatest and most varied forms. This flinty covering isopen to the exterior only by one or two slits, throughwhich the enclosed soft plasma-body communicates withthe outer world. The flinty cases are found petrified inmasses, and many rocks—^for example, the Tripoli slatepolish, the Swedish mountain meal, etc.,—are in a greatmeasure composed of them. A seventh class of Protista is formed by the remarkableSlinie-moulds (Myxomycetes). They were formerly uni-versally considered as plants, as real Fungi, until ten yearsago the botanist De Bary, by discovering their ontogeny,proved them to be quite distinct from Fungi, and ratherto be akin to the lower animals. The mature body is a. THE SLIME-MOULDS. 6 I Fig. 15.—A stalked fruit-body (, filledwith spores) of one of the Myiomyoetes (Physarnmalbipes) not much enlarged. roundish bladder, often several inches insize, filled with fine spore-dust and softflakes (Fig. 15), as in the case of the ?well-known puff-balls (Gastromycetes). However, the characteristic cellular threads, orhyphae, of a real fungus do not arise fromthe germinal corpuscles, or spores, of the Myxomycetes, butmerely naked masses of plasma, or cells, which at first swimabout in the form of Flagellata (Fig. 11), afterwards creepabout like the Amoebae (Fig. 10 B), and finally combinewith others of the same kind to form large masses of slime,or Plasmodia. Out of these, again, there arises, by-and-by,the bladder
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Keywords: ., bookcentury, bookdecade1870, booksubjecthumanbeings, bookyear1876
