4-U THE GARDENER. [Oct. 



those of your readers who may not have read the address in the daily or 

 weekly press : — 



"As has been said, protoplasm lies at the base of every vital phenomenon. 

 It is, as Huxley has well expressed it, 'the physical basis of life.' Wherever 

 there is life, from its lowest to its highest manifestations, there is protoplasm ; 

 wherever there is protoplasm, there, too, is life. Thus co-extensive with the 

 whole of organic nature — every vital act being referable to some mode or pro- 

 perty of protoplasm — it becomes to the biologist what the ether is to the physi- 

 cist ; only that, instead of being a hypothetical conception, accepted as a reality 

 from its adequacy in the explanation of phenomena, it is a tangible and visible 

 reality, which the chemist may analyse in his laboratory, the biologist scruti- 

 nise beneath his microscope. 



" The chemical composition of protoplasm is very complex, and has not been 

 exactly determined. It may, however, be stated that protoplasm is essentially 

 a combination of albuminoid bodies, and that its principal elements are, there- 

 fore, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen. In its typical state it presents 

 the condition of a semi-fluid substance — a tenacious, glairy liquid, with a 

 consistence somewhat like that of the white of an unboiled egg. "While we 

 watch it beneath the microscope movements are set up in it ; waves traverse 

 its surface, or it may be seen to flow away in streams, either broad and attain- 

 ing but a slight distance from the main mass, or else stretching away far from 

 their source, as narrow liquid threads, which may continue simple, or may 

 divide into branches, each following its own independent course ; or the 

 streams may flow one into the other, as streamlets would flow into rivulets 

 and rivulets into rivers, and this not only where gravity would carry them, 

 but in a direction diametrically opposed to gravitation : now we see it spread- 

 ing itself out on all sides into a thin liquid stratum, and again drawing itself 

 together within the narrow limits which had at first confined it, and all this 

 without any obvious impulse from without which would send the ripples over 

 its surface or set the streams flowing from its margin. Though it is certain 

 that all these phenomena are in response to some stimulus exerted on it by the 

 outer world, they are such as we never met with in a simply physical fluid — 

 they are spontaneous movements resulting from its proper irritability, from 

 its essential constitution as living matter. Examine it closer, bring to bear on 

 it the highest power of your microscope — you will probably find disseminated 

 through it countless multitudes of exceedingly minute granules ; but you may 

 also find it absolutely homogeneous, and, whether containing granules or not, 

 it is certain that you will find nothing to which the term organisation can be 

 applied. You have before you a glairy, tenacious fluid, which, if not absolutely 

 homogeneous, is yet totally destitute of structure. And yet no one who con- 

 templates this spontaneously moving matter can deny that it is alive. Liquid 

 as it is, it is a living liquid ; organless and structureless as it is, it manifests 

 the essential phenomena of life." 



It is difficult to conceive of an "organless and structureless" substance 

 possessing life ; and it is on this particular and important point that bio- 

 logists have not satisfied thinkers : it is not yet satisfactorily proved that pro- 

 toplasm is a living substance. Huxley cherishes the conviction fondly, but 

 probably he has doubts and misgivings on the subject; and his position is 

 hit off rather happily in the following lines, published when the Association 

 w r as sitting : — 



