Formed Constituents of Organisms 151 



research. If then it can be shoT\Ti experimentally that "char- 

 acters" vary when subjected to changing environal stimuli, 

 this will be a first step toward a true aspect of the question. 

 To the consideration of this we shall proceed in a future chapter 

 (chap. 8). 



An examination can now be made of the "stock-in-trade" 

 of the Caryota, in order to ascertain how far and to what extent 

 similar cell substances occur throughout the entire series of 

 plants and animals. 



The cell ^protoplasm — as histological text-books generally 

 show — consists of a viscous material with properties in common 

 aUke to plants and animals. Thus it usually is divisible into 

 ectoplasmic and endoplasmic layers; its substance is traversed 

 by a fine fibrillar network; and the whole has an alveolar or 

 foamy texture. It absorbs or rejects stains according as these 

 show or do not show an affinity for it in chemical action and 

 reaction (22). It nearly always invests itself vnX\\ a wall or 

 membrane that is of isolichenin, fungus cellulose, cellulose, or 

 is infiltrated largely with nitrogeneous constituents as in the 

 animal wall. All of these varieties of wall material show 

 transitions from one to another. 



This protoplasm seems in all cases to represent an intricate 

 mass of interacting ether particles of complex interunion that 

 together are traversed by, energized by, and that are built 

 up or broken down by bio tic energy. This bio tic energy is 

 constantly being replenished by supplies of electric and chemic 

 energy, that become transformed into it as intra-molecular 

 biotic energy, while the last is constantly dissipating or breaking 

 down into the simpler types of energy. 



The protoplasm often shows continuity from cell to cell 

 by intercellular threads, and shows like irritable response to 

 thermic, lumic, chemic, electric, and other stimuli, though to 

 varying degrees and according to specific differences. Accord- 

 ingly Waller truly notes {Jf,8: 12) "the essential identity between 

 the excitatory responses of vegetable and of animal proto- 

 plasm"; while a like refrain comes from many biologists. 



Cilia are definite outgrowths of the living plasma, that may 

 appear and disappear alike amongst plants and animals, ac- 

 cording to the functions and environal activities of the exposed 

 cells. Phillips, working under the writer's direction, very 

 clearly showed primitive and slowly moving cilia in some of 

 the SchizophycejE {35: 318). Amongst the bacteria they attain 



