Vitality and Organization of Protoplasm. 49 



substance. Each independent center of reproduction begins then sepa- 

 rately to exercise its power of reintegration, tending thereby to recon- 

 struct the entire adult form. To effect this it uses substance derived 

 from the dividing individual itself, and also prepared nutritive material. 

 And failing the supply of nutritive material it assimilates so much of 

 the protoplasmic substance as it can draw to its share. 



By watching the self-divison of quiescent Infusoria, such as tliat of 

 Epistylis, or still better that of Colpoda cucullus, the out and out trans- 

 fromation of the protoplasm by force of an elaborate process of reconsti- 

 tution from independent centers of activity can be readily ascertained. 

 I have observed in 37 Colpijode-dpheres simultaneously under view their 

 respective division ' in two, four, five, six, and seven new individuals. 

 Mitotic centrosomes are evidently such independent centers of reproduc- 

 tion and the astrospheres the visible signs of the reproductive activity. 



Buds, external and internal, and spores and germs of all kinds, con- 

 stitute chemical fragments of the organism from which they are de- 

 tached, centers of reproduction awaiting favorable conditions of the 

 medium to begin their regenerative or reproductive activity. The no- 

 tion that all kinds of reproductive plasms are essentially chemical frag- 

 ments of the organism from which they originated, is by no means a 

 mere hypothetical assumption, such as that to which the purely hypo- 

 thetical units of Darwin, Haeckel, De Vries, ISTaegeli, Weismann, etc., 

 owe their existence. It is, indeed, hardly more than a direct interpreta- 

 tion of observable facts. For we actually witness that fragments of or- 

 ganic beings, and even fragments of their egg-plasm do reproduce the 

 organic form, from which they are derived. That these fragments are 

 of a specific chemical nature, endowed with most specific chemical af- 

 finities which are being satisfied or saturated during reintegration, re- 

 generation or reproduction; this their definite chemical consistency fol- 

 lows from the living substance being itself an out and out specific chem- 

 ical substance, forming as such an integrant whole, and exercising its 

 functional activities, its motility, assimilation and depuration, by force 

 of chemical reintegration following functional disintegration. The 

 chemical bond which constitutes protoplasm being ruptured, it loses at 

 once all its vital properties, and is as Eeinke forcibly expresses it no more 

 real protoplasm, than a watch ground to powder is a real watch. Con- 

 sequently reproductive fragments of all kinds, in order to consist of real 

 protoplasm or living substance, and not of dead matter, must neces- 

 sarily partake of the chemical nature of the protoplasmic individual from 

 which they are derived. They must be specific chemical fragments. 

 And the power of reintegrating itself being the central vital property 

 of the protoplasmic individual, its reproductive germ, to be endowed 

 with vitality, must likewise be endowed with reintegrative power. 

 Growth and reproduction consist, then, in the reintegration of a chemical 

 fragment, so as to reproduce the organism from which the fragment was 

 detached. 



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