THE LIVING SUBSTANCE. 69 



stable areas of Biitschli's structure, their transportation from 

 place to place in the meshwork, and certain marvellous filose 

 displays from the surface of stable pellicles covering stable 

 arrangements of Biitschli's structure, are thus explained ; also 

 those phenomena seen in masses and extensions of protoplasm 

 whose whole bulk is less than the thickness of interalveolar 

 substance in many an area of Biitschli's structure. 



(c) The Brownian-like movements of granules and vesicles in 

 fluid, living, protoplasm at times, — notably among the Infu- 

 soria during certain states correlated with reproductive phe- 

 nomena, when the nuclear bodies are broken up into fragments 

 or granules, may doubtless be referred to this cause. 



(d) The formation and the dissipation also of larval areas 

 and organs are, as will be shown, due to such activities of the 

 interalveolar substance ; whether secondarily or primarily is 

 yet to be determined. 



\yy'\ The flux and the contractions of continuous substance 

 are a cause and a means of displacement of protoplasm, not 

 only in bulk internally to the mass and also along lines of the 

 meshwork and pellicles ; but outside the mass or area into the 

 water or other environmental substance. 



[78] Displacement of this latter sort, which at times involves 

 a relatively large proportion of the protoplasm in a mass, may 

 go on, yet be invisible except under specially favorable optical 

 conditions, and, as will be shown, even under these. The dis- 

 placed substance because of its minutely subdivided state may 

 still remain invisible ; and may later be returned to the mass in 

 the same manner that it issued forth, while the observer is 

 unconscious of any phenomenon except, perhaps, of change of 

 bulk in the mass, — and for this, is there not always possible, 

 and ready, a physical explanation of "osmotic changes " } 



An instance of this may gain a little credence for this rather 

 startling statement which will however be amply upheld in 

 the course of these remarks. About a large Myxomycete, under 

 observation for sequence of protoplasmic movements, the water 

 was seen to swarm with granules and a vague suggestion of a 

 watery material which was in places somewhat flocculent and was 

 at first taken to be excreted substance. Doubtless it would 



