HUXLE YS PRO TO PL ASM. 1 7 



consists of different kinds of matter, and it has been sup- 

 posed that distinct offices were performed by some of these. 

 They have been variously named. Cell-wall, cell-contents, 

 nucleus, nucleolus, periplast, endoplast, primordial utricle, 

 protoplasm, living matter and formed matter, are not all the 

 terms that have been proposed. I think Professor Huxley 

 is the first observer who has spoken of the cell in its 

 entirety as a mass of protoplasm, and the only one who has 

 ever asserted that any tissue in nature is composed through- 

 out of matter which can properly be regarded as one in 

 kind. This view appears to me incompatible with many 

 facts, some of which have been alluded to by Mr. Huxley 

 himself.* I doubt if in the whole range of modern science 

 it would be possible to find an assertion which seems more 

 at variance with facts familiar to physiologists than the 

 statement that " beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, 

 worm, and polype," are composed of " masses of proto- 

 plasm with a nucleus," unless it be that still more extra- 

 vagant assertion that what is ordinarily termed a cell or 

 elementary part is a mass of protoplasm ; for can anything 

 be more unlike the semi-fluid, active, moving matter of 

 amoeba protoplasm, than the hard, dry, passive, external 

 part of a cuticular cell or of an elementary part of bone ? 



I cannot forbear quoting in this place the following pas- 

 sage, which seems to me to require explanation. After 

 stating that the substance of a colourless blood-corpuscle 



* "The original endoplast of the embryo cell," Huxley says, in 

 1853, "has grown and divided into all the endoplasts of the adult," and 

 "the original periplast has grown at a corresponding rate, and has 

 formed one continuous and connected envelope from the very first." 



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