1885.] NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 67 



with us, it has been thought that creation is going on all the time, 

 and that it can be shown that forms of life are developed in 

 water, without any previous life for their origin. This, however, 

 is not shown to be true. Indeed, the results of all the experi- 

 ments so far, show that no life with which we are acquainted, is 

 brought into existence without a previously existing germ, that 

 may be invisible. 



One of the first forms of life is " protoplasm." It is the " living 

 portion" of the plant, that which is sensitive, which moves, and 

 which appropriates the food ; and in it lies the principle that 

 makes the plant grow. 



This is always in constant motion, under the proper conditions 

 of heat and moisture, and is shown under Microscopes Nos. 39 

 and 44. 



There are but few characteristics which distinguish between 

 vegetable and animal protoplasm. Everything, animal and veg- 

 etable, begins in a "speck of jelly; " and this jelly-speck in its 

 simplest animal form, the Amoeba, is found everywhere in water, 

 and has been seen by every microscopist. 



Grant Allen, in a recent publication, describes it as follows : 

 " In these minute and very simple animals there is absolutely no 

 division of labor between part and part ; every bit of the jelly- 

 like mass is alike head and foot and mouth and stomach. The 

 jelly-speck has no permanent limbs, but it keeps putting forth 

 vague arms and legs every now and then from one side or the 

 other ; and with these temporary and ever-dissolving members 

 it crawls along merrily through its tiny drop of stagnant water. 

 If two of the legs or arms happen to knock up casually against 

 one another, they coalesce at once, just like two drops of water 

 on a window-pane, or two strings of treacle slowly spreading 

 along the surface of a plate. When the jelly-speck meets any 

 edible thing — a bit of dead plant, a wee creature like itself, a 

 microscopic egg — it proceeds to fold its own substance slimily 

 around it, making, as it were, a temporary mouth for the pur- 

 pose of swallowing it, and a temporary stomach for the purpose 

 of quietly digesting and assimilating it afterward. Thus what 

 at one moment is a foot, may at the next moment become a 

 mouth, and at the moment after that again a rudimentary stomach. 

 The animal has no skin and no body, no outside and no inside, 

 no distinction of parts or members, no individuality, no identity. 



