The Evolution of Man, vol 2 by Ernst Haeckel (fun books to read for adults TXT) 📕

>The whole life of these homogeneous globules of plasm consists of simple growth and reproduction by cleavage. When the tiny particle has reached a certain size by the continuous assimilation of inorganic matter, it divides into two equal halves, by a constriction in the middle. The two daughter-monera that are thus formed immediately begin a similar vital process. It is the same with the brown Procytella primordialis (formerly called the Protococcus marinus); it forms large masses of floating matter in the arctic seas. The tiny plasma-globules of this species are of a greenish-brown colour, and have a diameter of 1/10,000 to 1/5000 of an inch. There is no membrane discoverable in the simplest Chroococcacea, but we find one in other members of the same family; in Aphanocapsa (Figure 2.227) the enveloping membranes of the social plastids combine; in Gloecapsa they are retained through several generations, so that the little plasma-globules are enfolded in many layers of membrane.

Next to the Chromacea come the Bacteria, which have been evolved from them by the remarkable change in nutrition which gives us the simple explanation of the differentiation of plant and animal in the protist kingdom. The Chromacea build up their plasm directly from inorganic matter; the Bacteria feed on organic matter. Hence, if we logically divide the protist kingdom into plasma-forming Protophyta and plasma-consuming Protozoa, we must class the Bacteria with the latter; it is quite illogical to describe them—as is still often done—as Schizomycetes, and class them with the true fungi. The Bacteria, like the Chromacea, have no nucleus. As is well-known, they play an important part in modern biology as the causes of fermentation and putrefaction, and of tuberculosis, typhus, cholera, and other infectious diseases, and as parasites, etc. But we cannot linger now to deal with these very interesting features; the Bacteria have no relation to man’s genealogical tree.

We may now turn to consider the remarkable Protamoeba, or unnucleated Amoeba. I have, in the first volume, pointed out the great importance of the ordinary Amoeba in connection with several weighty questions of general biology. The tiny Protamoebae, which are found both in fresh and salt water, have the same unshapely form and irregular movements of their simple naked body as the real Amoebae; but they differ from them very materially in having no nucleus in their cell-body. The short, blunt, finger-like processes that are thrust out at the surface of the creeping Protamoeba serve for getting food as well as for locomotion. They multiply by simple cleavage (Figure 2.228).

(FIGURE 2.228. A moneron (Protamoeba) in the act of reproduction. A The whole moneron, moving like an ordinary amoeba by thrusting out changeable processes. B It divides into two halves by a constriction in the middle. C The two halves separate, and each becomes an independent individual. (Highly magnified.))

The next stage to the simple cytode-forms of the Monera in the genealogy of mankind (and all other animals) is the simple cell, or the most rudimentary form of the cell which we find living independently to-day as the Amoeba. The earliest process of inorganic differentiation in the structureless body of the Monera led to its division into two different substances—the caryoplasm and the cytoplasm. The caryoplasm is the inner and firmer part of the cell, the substance of the nucleus. The cytoplasm is the outer and softer part, the substance of the body of the cell. By this important differentiation of the plasson into nucleus and cell-body, the organised cell was evolved from the structureless cytode, the nucleated from the unnucleated plastid. That the first cells to appear on the earth were formed from the Monera by such a differentiation seems to us the only possible view in the present condition of science. We have a direct instance of this earliest process of differentiation to-day in the ontogeny of many of the lower Protists (such as the Gregarinae).

The unicellular form that we have in the ovum has already been described as the reproduction of a corresponding unicellular stem-form, and to this we have ascribed the organisation of an Amoeba (cf. Chapter 1.6). The irregular-shaped Amoeba, which we find living independently to-day in our fresh and salt water, is the least definite and the most primitive of all the unicellular Protozoa (Figure 1.16). As the unripe ova (the protova that we find in the ovaries of animals) cannot be distinguished from the common Amoebae, we must regard the Amoeba as the primitive form that is reproduced in the embryonic stage of the amoeboid ovum to-day, in accordance with the biogenetic law. I have already pointed out, in proof of the striking resemblance of the two cells, that the ova of many of the sponges were formerly regarded as parasitic Amoebae (Figure 1.18). Large unicellular organisms like the Amoebae were found creeping about inside the body of the sponge, and were thought to be parasites. It was afterwards discovered that they were really the ova of the sponge from which the embryos were developed. As a matter of fact, these sponge-ova are so much like many of the Amoebae in size, shape, the character of their nucleus, and movement of the pseudopodia, that it is impossible to distinguish them without knowing their subsequent development.

Our phylogenetic interpretation of the ovum, and the reduction of it to some ancient amoeboid ancestral form, supply the answer to the old problem: “Which was first, the egg or the chick?” We can now give a very plain answer to this riddle, with which our opponents have often tried to drive us into a corner. The egg came a long time before the chick. We do not mean, of course, that the egg existed from the first as a bird’s egg, but as an indifferent amoeboid cell of the simplest character. The egg lived for thousands of years as an independent unicellular organism, the Amoeba. The egg, in the modern physiological sense of the word, did not make its appearance until the descendants of the unicellular Protozoon had developed into multicellular animals, and these had undergone sexual differentiation. Even then the egg was first a gastraea-egg, then a platode-egg, then a vermalia-egg, and chordonia-egg; later still acrania-egg, then fish-egg, amphibia-egg, reptile-egg, and finally bird’s egg. The bird’s egg we have experience of daily is a highly complicated historical product, the result of countless hereditary processes that have taken place in the course of millions of years.

The earliest ancestors of our race were simple Protophyta, and from these our protozoic ancestors were developed afterwards. From the morphological point of view both the vegetal and the animal Protists were simple organisms, individualities of the first order, or plastids. All our later ancestors are complex organisms, or individualities of a higher order—social aggregations of a plurality of cells. The earliest of these, the Moraeada, which represent the third stage in our genealogy, are very simple associations of homogeneous, indifferent cells—undifferentiated colonies of social Amoebae or Infusoria. To understand the nature and origin of these protozoa-colonies we need only follow step by step the first embryonic products of the stem-cell. In all the Metazoa the first embryonic process is the repeated cleavage of the stem-cell, or first segmentation-cell (Figure 2.229). We have already fully considered this process, and found that all the different forms of it may be reduced to one type, the original equal or primordial segmentation (cf. Chapter 1.8). In the genealogical tree of the Vertebrates this palingenetic form of segmentation has been preserved in the Amphioxus alone, all the other Vertebrates having cenogenetically modified forms of cleavage. In any case, the latter were developed from the former, and so the segmentation of the ovum in the Amphioxus has a great interest for us (cf. Figure 1.38). The outcome of this repeated cleavage is the formation of a round cluster of cells, composed of homogeneous, indifferent cells of the simplest character (Figure 2.230). This is called the morula (= mulberry-embryo) on account of its resemblance to a mulberry or blackberry.

(FIGURE 2.229. Original or primordial ovum-cleavage. The stem-cell or cytula, formed by fecundation of the ovum, divides by repeated regular cleavage first into two (A), then four (B), then eight (C), and finally a large number of segmentation-cells (D).

FIGURE 2.230. Morula, or mulberry-shaped embryo.)

It is clear that this morula reproduces for us to-day the simple structure of the multicellular animal that succeeded the unicellular amoeboid form in the early Laurentian period. In accordance with the biogenetic law, the morula recalls the ancestral form of the Moraea, or simple colony of Protozoa. The first cell-communities to be formed, which laid the early foundation of the higher multicellular body, must have consisted of homogeneous and simple amoeboid cells. The oldest Amoebae lived isolated lives, and even the amoeboid cells that were formed by the segmentation of these unicellular organisms must have continued to live independently for a long time. But gradually small communities of Amoebae arose by the side of these eremitical Protozoa, the sister-cells produced by cleavage remaining joined together. The advantages in the struggle for life which these communities had over the isolated cells favoured their formation and their further development. We find plenty of these cell-colonies or communities to-day in both fresh and salt water. They belong to various groups both of the Protophyta and Protozoa.

To have some idea of those ancestors of our race that succeeded phylogenetically to the Moraeada, we have only to follow the further embryonic development of the morula. We then see that the social cells of the round cluster secrete a sort of jelly or a watery fluid inside their globular body, and they themselves rise to the surface of it (Figure 1.29 F, G). In this way the solid mulberry-embryo becomes a hollow sphere, the wall of which is composed of a single layer of cells. We call this layer the blastoderm, and the sphere itself the blastula, or embryonic vesicle.

This interesting blastula is very important. The conversion of the morula into a hollow ball proceeds on the same lines originally in the most diverse stems—as, for instance, in many of the zoophytes and worms, the ascidia, many of the echinoderms and molluscs, and in the amphioxus. Moreover, in the animals in which we do not find a real palingenetic blastula the defect is clearly due to cenogenetic causes, such as the formation of food-yelk and other embryonic adaptations. We may, therefore, conclude that the ontogenetic blastula is the reproduction of a very early phylogenetic ancestral form, and that all the Metazoa are descended from a common stem-form, which was in the main constructed like the blastula. In many of the lower animals the blastula is not developed within the foetal membranes, but in the open water. In those cases each blastodermic cell begins at an early stage to thrust out one or more mobile hair-like processes; the body swims about by the vibratory movement of these lashes or whips (Figure 1.29 F).

We still find, both in the sea and in fresh water, various kinds of primitive multicellular organisms that substantially resemble the blastula in structure, and may be regarded in a sense as permanent blastula-forms—hollow vesicles or gelatinous balls, with a wall composed of a single layer of ciliated homogeneous cells. There are “blastaeads” of this kind even among the Protophyta—the familiar Volvocina, formerly classed with the infusoria. The common Volvox globator is found in the ponds in the spring—a small, green, gelatinous globule, swimming about by means of the stroke of its lashes, which rise in pairs from the cells on its surface. In the similar Halosphaera viridis also, which we find in the marine plancton (floating matter), a number of green cells form a simple layer at the surface of the gelatinous ball; but in this case there are no cilia.

Some of the infusoria of the flagellata-class (Signura, Magosphaera, etc.) are similar in structure to these vegetal clusters, but differ in their animal nutrition; they form the special group