PROTOPLASM. 



bolic power. Now, however, he considers " protoplasm" of 

 the first importance ; and under this term includes, I 

 imagine, not only the primordial utricle and the " accidental 

 anatomical modifications " it encloses, but the fully-formed 

 cellulose wall of the vegetable cell. His " endoplast" and 

 "periplastic substance" of 1853 together constitute his 

 "protoplasm" of 1869. The old views are modified, and 

 although the results of researches made during the last few 

 years are scarcely alluded to, the writer evidently feels that 

 certain changes must be made. So the vacuoles of the 

 periplastic substance become silently tenanted by simple or 

 nucleated protoplasms endowed with "subtle influences" 

 which our author may yet admit to have existed before his 

 periplastic substance was formed. Next he will discover 

 the endoplast is of the highest importance instead of no 

 importance at all, and then there is but an easy step to the 

 doctrine that the periplastic substance is formed by and from 

 the protoplasm which has properties and "subtle influences" of 

 a remarkable kind, but is not endowed with the absurd fiction 

 of vitality. 



Max. Schultze included under the head of protoplasm 

 the active moving matter forming the sarcode of the Rhizo- 

 pods as well as the substance circulating in the cells of 

 vallisneria, the hairs of the nettle, and other vegetable cells ; 

 and now it is generally admitted that the active, moving 

 matter constituting the white blood-corpuscle, the mucus 

 and pus corpuscle, and other contractile bodies widely dis- 

 tributed, is essentially of the same nature. The move- 

 ments characteristic of this matter have been attributed to 

 an inherent property of contractility j and this property 



