LIFE FROM A PHYSICAL STANDPOINT. 1 5 



Within the past few years several experimenters have been 

 studying the characteristic movements that take place in emul- 

 sions of soap, oils, and so on, with the result as announced that 

 they are substantially the same as those seen in amoebiform 

 masses. Pseudopodia are formed and absorptive material in 

 the neighborhood is gathered in, a duplication of the process 

 of feeding and of digestion. Such material has been called 

 artificial protoplasm, and a short account of it will be of interest 

 to those who have not chanced to meet with it. Professors 

 Quincke and Butschli, of Heidelberg, have perhaps done more 

 in this line than any others, and the latter has published a mon- 

 ograph of 230 pages quarto, with six plates, on such artificial 

 protoplasm. 



Quincke found that, if a substance soluble in water be finely 

 powdered and rubbed up with oil and then surrounded with 

 water, that the water diffuses into the oil and makes of it a 

 kind of foam, consisting of minute drops of water closely 

 packed together in oil, and thus presents the appearance of 

 honeycomb structure. 



The soluble substance which works best for this preparation 

 is K2CO3. Olein oil is generally used, — ordinary oil is use- 

 less, — and much pains need be taken in preparing it, but when 

 a minute drop of this properly prepared substance is placed in 

 water or a mixture of equal parts of glycerine and water, it be- 

 comes clear and transparent and exhibits changes in shape ; 

 streaming movements like those of an amoeba are seen, which 

 are kept up for hours ; it throws out processes and withdraws 

 others, and the drop as a whole will change its position. 



Up the center of the processes there is a streaming move- 

 ment to the end of the process, where it spreads out and flows 

 back in a layer next the surface. The movements are in- 

 fluenced by warmth and by electricity, and one who did not 

 know what it was he was looking at would suppose he was see- 

 ing an actual amoeba. 



Frommann, Klein, and many histologists find that proto- 

 plasm consists of a kind of network of less fluid material, the 

 interstices being filled with more fluid material ; indeed, such 

 kind of structure is thought to be true of every kind of animal 



