42 Vitality and Organization of Protoplasm. 



in different kinds of amoeboid beings. By watching the slender, seem- 

 ingly deadened pseudopodia of Heliozoa, we see all manner of stray stuff 

 drift between their rays. Among the particles of foreign matter coming 

 in contact with the far-reaching pseudopodia, only a few are specifically 

 attracted and retained; evidently through what is called chemical af- 

 finity. By combination with many such minute particles the sharp out- 

 lines of the pseudopodia become gradually serrated. Their substance is 

 undergoing progressive restitution through chemical union with the 

 foreign complemental material. It is, in fact, seen gradually to re- 

 melt and contract. Several rays in this state are often seen to meet 

 and to coalesce, acting upon one another as complemental material. 

 Contracting more and more they eventually form together a globule, 

 which is drawn into the body of the protoplasmic individual, there 

 to constitute a nutritive corpuscle. At times some large body, fit 

 for food, gets entangled between the rays, which on contact with it 

 rapidly dissolve, coalescing around it, so as to form a large globule 

 inclosing the foreign body, eventually to be drawn into the protoplasmic 

 individual to serve there as nutritive material. Nutritive corpuscles of 

 this kind are found, as is well known, in most "fluent" protoplasmic 

 beings. They have the function of preparing assimilable material fit 

 to reintegrate the living substance after functional deterioration. This 

 preparation of assimilative material is effected in the nutritive cor- 

 puscle by chemical interaction between the enveloping protoplasm and 



, the nutritive material. 



In these stellar protozoa the rays become so deeply deteriorated as to 

 remain exteriorized and deadened until redeemed to life by direct com- 

 bination with complemental material. The preparation of assimilative 

 material becomes in this instance a function of every pseudopodic ray. 



- The substance of each ray melts under direct union with externally 

 supplied material, and elaborates then the complemental substance for 

 reintegration of the entire being, enabling it to emit new rays. 



In more highly developed amoeboid beings the process of direct ex- 

 ternal reintegration of the pseudopodia, exclusively by means of imme- 

 diate union with foreign material, is transformed into a process of in- 

 direct reintegration from within. The nutritive corpuscles, formed by 

 partial assimilation of food material on the part of one portion of the 

 amoeboid substance, are lodged in the interior of the protoplasmic in- 

 dividual, and elaborate there the assimilable material for the complete 

 reintegration of other portions of the protoplasm. In this manner one 

 portion of the living substance comes to prepare assimilative material 

 for the restitution of the other portion, which in consequence is enabled 

 to assume exclusively the dynamical interaction with the medium. A 

 digesting portion of the common protoplasm becomes thus subservient 

 to a moving portion. And this means that the internal substance, or 

 what in higher organisms is called the entoderm, has the function of 

 fumishine; restitntive material for the substance that is brought into 



