THE LIVING SUBSTANCE. 89 



True protoplasmic life and habit lie hidden beneath those 

 very forms and habits of a grosser nature in which they have 

 hitherto been sought ; as too often happens, the oracle has 

 been veiled by the very terms of its expression. 



In those sections which follow after Contractility, many more 

 facts are added and this line of thought is further expanded by 

 their means. 



Striation. 



At the outset of this record of facts, I should like to disclaim 

 any attempt to deal as one who knows their conditions and 

 limitations, with the great problems of molecular physics in- 

 volved. Biitschli has proved upon his artificial foams certain 

 physical forms and interactions, and applied these in his re- 

 searches into the phenomena of the living substance. I have 

 ventured no more than to extend still further along the same 

 lines the same set of comparisons, using however certain other 

 phenomena which escaped Biitschli's observation, and seem not 

 to have been recorded at that time for his criticism. 



In supposing that I might follow so far as he essays to take 

 his readers, I may have been misled by the very lucidness and 

 thoroughness of Biitschli's analysis and demonstrations, so far 

 as these go ; and for precise understanding of them I have 

 depended to some extent upon the authorised English transla- 

 tion by Minchin. 



Biitschli found that a linear arrangement of alveoli, in both 

 fluid and very viscid foams, produced an optical, or what might 

 rather be called a psychological, striation of the substance. 

 He has shown that this effect is given also where the alveoli, in 

 addition to this purely mechanical arrangement, are elongated 

 in the same direction by compression, or osmotic changes, or 

 by tension of any sort causing extension, or stretching, of the 

 lamellar material. He finds himself able to group under these 

 heads all optical striation of the living substance, and he ex- 

 presses himself to the effect that a fibrous appearance depends 

 solely upon the arrangement, or extension, or stretching, of the 

 meshes in a given direction. Irregular, and tangled, fibrous 

 structure, can always, he thinks, be explained by the fact that 



