1890.] NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 29 



As to the bearing of all this upon the cell-doctrine, Professor 

 Huxley gives it as his opinion that " a nucleated mass of proto- 

 plasm turns out to be what may be termed the structural unit of 

 the human body. As a matter of fact, the body in its earliest 

 state, is a mere multiple of such units ; and, in its perfect con- 

 dition, it is a multiple of such units variously modified." " But," 

 asks Professor Huxley, " does the formula which expresses the 

 essential structural character of the highest animal cover all the 

 rest, as the statement of its powers and faculties covered that of 

 all others ? " And his reply is : " Very nearly. Beast and fowl, 

 reptile and fish, moUusk, worm, and polype, ;tre all composed of 

 structural units of the same character, namely masses of proto- 

 plasm with a nucleus. There are sundry very low animals, each 

 of which, structurally, is a mere colourless blood-corpuscle lead- 

 ing an independent life. But at the very bottom of the animal 

 scale even this simplicity becomes simplified, and all the phe- 

 nomena of life are manifested by a particle of protoplasm 

 without a nucleus." 



It ought, however, to be pointed out here, as it was long ago 

 by certain writers, that, notwithstanding the similarity in form 

 between a moner and a white blood corpuscle, the corpuscles of 

 a whale spilled in the sea would not continue their existence as 

 monera, nor would monera injected into the veins of one of the 

 higher animals perform the offices of the blood-corpuscles. 



At any rate, it is very evident that Professor Huxley is one of 

 those who have discarded the cell-wall as an essential part of the 

 structural unit, though it is not quite certain that he is ready 

 wholly to relinquish the nucleus. Still, his theory, like Beale's, 

 calls for a formative matter, rather than a forming vesicle, as the 

 foundation of every living structure, and the cell-wall, when 

 there is any, becomes a result of what then becomes cell-con- 

 tents : — the latter being cause to the former as effect, just as the 

 test is the product of the enclosed foraminifer, or the shell of 

 the mollusk. 



Having settled upon a mere mass of living matter as the 

 structural unit, Professor Huxley inquires " now what is the 

 ultimate fate and what the origin of the matter of life ? Is it, as 

 some of the older naturalists supposed, diffused throughout the 

 universe in molecules which are indestructible, and unchange- 

 able in themselves ; but, in endless transmigration, unite in 



