26 ' JOURNAL OF THE [April, 



authors definitions applying to things essentially different from 

 one another. Hard and soft, solid and liquid, coloured and 

 colourless, opaque and transparent, granular and destitute of 

 granules, structureless and having structure, moving and incap- 

 able of movement, active and passive, contractile and non-con- 

 tractile, growing and inc'apable of growth, changing and incap- 

 able of change, animate and inanimate, alive and dead, — are 

 some of the opposite qualities possessed by different kinds of 

 matter which have nevertheless been called protoplasm.'"* 



Notwithstanding the justness of this criticism of the general 

 looseness of other authors, there is some ground for thinking 

 that Doctor Beale has not been entirely clear and consistent in 

 his description and identification of his own germinal matter ; 

 for, although he declares that " bioplasm or living matter is 

 always transparent, colourless, and, as far as can be ascertained 

 by examination with the highest y^o\\QX% perfectly structureless,'' 

 he afterwards speaks of the substance of the amoeba as being 

 "darker and more granular in some places than in others ;" he 

 distinctly admits that " the bioplasm of all organisms, and of 

 the tissues and organs of each organism, exhibits precisely the 

 same characters ;" and he still later refers to the " component 

 particles " of bioplasm, which he finally distinguishes as bio- 

 plasts. The ovum, he tells us, "at an early period of its devel- 

 opment is but a naked mass of bioplasm, without any cell-walls, 

 but having a new centre or many new centres (known as germi- 

 nal spots or nuclei) embedded in it." These germinal spots 

 "are in fact new living centres of growth," and we may perhaps 

 be excused for asking whether the existence of so great differ- 

 ences of function in different parts of the bioplasm of the 

 amoeba, the white blood-corpuscle, the Vallisneria bioplasm, the 

 mucus corpuscle, and the ovum, are not pretty strong indica- 

 tions of structure. The question is therefore whether these 

 things are, after all, composed entirely of bioplasm ; for Doctor 

 Drysdale lays down the rule that " the name of bioplasm, given 

 by Beale, or protoplasm (in a restricted sense, as it will prob- 

 ably be ultimately accepted by biologists), as indicating the 

 ideal living matter, cannot be given to any substance displaying 

 ■ rigidity in any degree, from the softest gelatinous membrane up 



X4 "Protoplasm: or Matter and Life." 1874. 



