THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 131 



soria, and the more animal forms of Protists — where 

 actual solid organic matter is variously taken into 

 the substance of the body and assimilated in the 

 form of food ^5 and where the organism constitutes 

 more of an individualized whole — the transformative 

 organizing changes are often much more sudden and 

 striking. 



^ On this subject Professor Owen says (' Anat. of the Vertebrates,' 

 vol. iii. 1868, p. 818): — 'Amber or steel when magnetized seem to 

 exercise " selection :" they do not attract all substances alike. To the 

 suitable ones at due distance they tend to move ; but, through density 

 of constitution, cannot outstretch thereto ; so they draw the attracted 

 substance to themselves. If the amber be not rubbed, or. the steel bar 

 otherwise magnetised, they are " dead " to such power. The movement 

 of a free body to a magnet has always excited interest, often wonder, 

 from its analogy to the self-motion so common and apparently peculiar 

 to " life." ... A speck of protogenal jelly or of sarcode, if alive, shows 

 analogous relations to certain substances : but the soft-yielding tissue 

 allows the part next the attractive matter to move thereto, and then by 

 retraction to draw such matter into the sarcodal mass, which over- 

 spreads, dissolves, and assimilates it. \Ye say that the Protogenes or 

 Amceha has extended a "pseudopod," has seized its prey, has drawn it 

 in, swallowed, and digested it. No " organs," however, are recog- 

 nizable ; neither muscle, mouth, nor stomach. ... If the portion of iron 

 attracted by the magnet became blended with the substance of its 

 attractor, the analogy thereto of the act of the Amoeba would be, 

 perhaps, closer, more just, than that other analogy which is expressed 

 by terms borrowed from the procedure of higher organisms. . . . From 

 certain knowledge of the homogeneous, by some termed "unorganized," 

 texture of Protogenes and Amceba, we cannot predicate of their ha\ing 

 sensation or exercising volition. Given " life " and suitable organic 

 substances at due distances, the act of making contact seems as inevit- 

 able, as independent of any volition of the Amceha, as in the case of 

 amber or steel, given "magnetisation," and attractable substances at 

 due distances.' 



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