iSqo.] NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 43 



cated and, withal, mysterious operation. Professor Huxley's 

 easy transubstantiation of protoplasm known as boiled mutton 

 into protoplasm known as human brain-tissue, is consequently a 

 myth. 



This leads me to say. Fourth, that there appears to be no one 

 visible and tangible substance to which the name protoplasm is 

 rigidly and exclusively applied. As soon as we withdraw it 

 from a purely philosophical concept, we find it attached to 

 almost every sort of crude material which can by any possibility 

 enter into the composition of a living structure. The name is, 

 in particular, applied to any and every substance of a proteina- 

 ceous nature. In fact, with some writers, protoplasm is pretty 

 nearly synonymous with proteid. Botanists are specially inexact 

 in this respect. Having appropriated the name albumen for 

 a substance not at all albuminous, they now seem to have 

 adopted protoplasm as a designation for materials anything but 

 protoplasmic. Beale's protoplasm, you will remember, is homo- 

 geneous, and structureless, and always contains much water. 

 Professor Geddes, however, speaks of' the " comparatively solid, 

 almost brittle, state of the quiescent protoplasm of some seeds ;"** 

 and Professor Goodale tells us that the protoplasm of many 

 kinds of seeds and spores can preserve its vitality during expos- 

 ure to dry air at a temperature above that of boiling water under 

 which condition he admits that it would be thoroughly dessica- 

 ted.** " The consistence of protoplasm," he says, "depends on 

 the amount of water which it contains. Thus in dry seeds it is 

 nearly as tough as horn, while in the same seeds during germin- 

 ation it becomes like softened gelatin. '"^^ In another place he 

 speaks of " inactive, amorphous protoplasm, as it sometimes ex- 

 ists in certain cells, where it is simply a tough, shapeless mass."*'' 

 Fancy Doctor Beale's germinal matter reduced to the consist- 

 ency of horn, or even to that of softened gelatin ! 



But, Fifth, if in some seeds (the so-called vegetable ivory, for 

 example,) the only vitalizable substance is a solid, brittle, tough 

 and horny proteid, it looks as if we had struck an inexplicable 

 puzzle in the sudden appearance of the semi-fluid plastic proto- 



** Encyclopseclia Britanuica ; article. Protoplasm. 

 ''^ Gray's Pliysiolugieal Botany, p. 205. 

 =« Ibid, p. 38. 

 ==' Ibid, p. 44. 



