an ecologist from Cornell University named R. H. Whittaker unveiled in the journal Science a proposal to divide life into five principal branches, 康奈尔大学一位名叫R.H.魏泰克的生态学家在《科学》杂志上提出了一个建议，把生物分成五个主要部分，

kingdoms, as they are known—called Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, and Monera. 即所谓的“界”——动物界、植物界、真菌界、原生生物界、和原核生物界。

Protista, was a modification of an earlier term, Protoctista, which had been suggested a century earlier by a Scottish biologist named John Hogg, 原生生物原先是由苏格兰生物学家约翰·霍格提出来的，

and was meant to describe any organisms that were neither plant nor animal. 用来描述非植物，非动物的任何生物。

Though Whittaker's new scheme was a great improvement, Protista remained ill defined. 虽然魏泰克的新方案是个很大的改进，但原生生物界的含义仍没有明确界定。

Some taxonomists reserved it for large unicellular organisms—the eukaryotes, 有的分类学家把这个名称保留起来指大的单细胞微生物——真核细胞，

but others treated it as the kind of odd sock drawer of biology, putting into it anything that didn't fit anywhere else. 但有的把它当做生物池放单只袜子的抽屉，把任何归在哪里都不合适的东西塞到里面，

It included (depending on which text you consulted) slime molds, amoebas, and even seaweed, among much else.  其中包括（取决于你查阅的是什么资料）黏性杆菌、变形虫，甚至海藻。

By one calculation it contained as many as 200,000 different species of organism all told.  据有人计算，它总共包括了多达20万种不同的生物。

That's a lot of odd socks. 那可是一大堆单只袜子呀。

Ironically, just as Whittaker's five-kingdom classification was beginning to find its way into textbooks, 具有讽刺意味的是，正当魏泰克的五界分类法开始被写进教材的时候，

a retiring academic at the University of Illinois was groping his way toward a discovery that would challenge everything. 伊利诺伊大学一位脚踏实地的学者即将完成一个发现。这项发现将向一切提出挑战。

His name was Carl Woese, 他的名字叫卡尔·沃斯，

and since the mid-1960s—or about as early as it was possible to do so—he had been quietly studying genetic sequences in bacteria.  自20世纪60年代以来——或者说，早在有可能办这种事的时候——他一直在默默地研究细菌的遗传连贯性。