10 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



diffluent jelly speck as the amceba, just run a penknife blade into 

 the back of your wrist, put a drop of your blood on a slide, 

 dilute it slightly, put a cover glass on it, and examine it with a 

 high power. You will see what is now thrown on the screen. 

 Amongst the red blood globules, or corpuscles, you will notice, if 

 you observe patiently, something which will make you exclaim, 

 " That is very like an amceba ; are there amoebae in my blood ?" 

 Yes, the leucocytes or white corpuscles of the blood are the 

 analogues of amcebae, they perform the amoeboid movements, 

 put out processes, multiply by subdivision, and ingest solid 

 particles, chiefly the bacteria which gain entrance to the system. 

 This is beautifully shown in the two very remarkable and typical 

 preparations made by Mr. Pound, the slides of which he has been 

 so kind as to lend me. In the first you will see that the leucocyte 

 is winning the day ; it keeps intact, and is demolishing the 

 invading bacilli. In the next the invaders are victorious, and 

 the leucocyte is undergoing disruption, with the result that the 

 death of the animal would ensue. 



What then is protoplasm ? That question brings us to the 

 threshold of the unknowable. Protoplasm is not a single 

 chemical substance. It is a vast complex of a large number of 

 chemical substances known as proteids. These proteids are 

 themselves, even looked at singly, the most complex of all known 

 organic substances. To take an instance, certain ambitious 

 chemists have endeavoured to express the molecule of one of 

 them, egg albumen, by the formula C72, H106, NlS, S022, 

 meaning that in its composition 72 parts of carbon, 106 parts of 

 hydrogen, 18 parts of nitrogen, 1 part of sulphur, and 22 parts 

 of oxygen are united in chemical combination. Considering that 

 this is an approximation to the composition of one of the 

 proteids, and that protoplasm is a complex of proteids influencing 

 and reacting on each other in ways we cannot at present even 

 dream of, you will realise with what a baffling mystery we are 

 confronted. The scientific writers of a few decades back were 

 accustomed to speak of the homogeneity of protoplasm and of 

 the structureless character of the cell, and the poets still glibly 

 affirm, like Sir Lewis Morris, that science has 



Thrust life to its utmost home, 



A speck of grey, no more nor higher. 



