Abstract
We began our survey at a time when Ehrenberg's functional principles concerning the design of all organisms prevailed in interpreting the taxonomic place and internal structure of Infusoria. Other options existed, such as Dujardin's sarcode theory and Siebold's cellular analogy, but these were not persuasive for reasons both relevant to and in addition to the microscopic observations. By mid-century other considerations, including the continuing search for complex life cycles and manifestations of sex, dictated the microscopist's rendering of infusorians. Muller and his students saw spermatozoa and gonads; Stein envisioned alternating generations and generative nuclei; Balbiani found sexual behavior in the events of conjugation; and all interpreted the nuclei and nucleoli as gonads or gonadal products. Evolutionary theory provided a fourth dimension. Obsessed with phylogenies, particularly when joined with the germ-layer theory of development, Haeckel emphasized a structural interpretation and found a considerably altered cell theory ready to fill the breach.
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