tSpo.] NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 27 



to the hardest teeth-enamel ; nor to anything exhibiting a trace 

 of structure to the finest microscope ; nor to any liquid ; nor to 

 any substance capable of true solution."'* 



It is plain from all that has been said that Beale's theory dis- 

 penses with the cell-wall as an essential part of the ultimate 

 physiological unit, and that under his system the nucleus 

 becomes a mere centre of activity : — the spot where vitality 

 bubbles up and overflows to the adjacent protoplasm. The 

 mystery of life is therefore narrowed to a veritable point within 

 a simple habitat ; and, in the words of Doctor Drysdale, the 

 problem which Doctor Beale had undertaken was " to account 

 for all the vital phenomena of a complicated individual of the 

 higher orders by the sole action of this structureless, clear, 

 semi-fluid matter." 



But now Professor Huxley takes in hand the broader task 

 which Cohn had begun twenty years earlier, in an endeavor to 

 prove that " there is some one kind of matter which is common 

 to all living beings, and that their endless diversities are bound 

 together by a physical, as well as an ideal, unity." This is the 

 primary thesis of his lecture on "The Physical Basis of Life,"'^ 

 or, as he at first entitled it, " The Bases of Physical Life."'^ 



Now Doctor Beale has said that, although all bioplasm possesses 

 certain common characters, " we must admit that in nature there 

 are different kinds of bioplasm indistinguishable by physics and 

 chemistry, but endowed with different powers, flourishing under 

 different circumstances, consuming different kinds of pabulum, 

 growing at a different rate and under very different conditions 

 as regards temperature, moisture, light, and atmosphere, posess- 

 ing different degrees of resisting power, and d^ing under very 

 different circumstances, having varying powers of resisting alter- 

 ations in external conditions." Doctor Beale's bioplasm is 

 therefore an " ideal " living matter, of a generic similarity rather 

 than of a specific identity. 



Although the general purpose of Professor Huxley's essay is 

 to show that all protoplasms are onie, or that they are mutually 

 convertible into one another, he is obliged, at the outset, to 



15 " rpjjg piotoplasmic Theorj' of Life." P. 45. 

 »« Fortnightly Review. Feby. 1, 1869. 

 1' The Scotsman. Nov. 9, 1868. 



