936 GLEANINGS. 
Gleanmgs. 
Tue British Association commenced its forty-ninth annual meeting 
on Wednesday, August 20th, at Sheffield, under the presidency of Prof. 
G. J. Allman, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., &c., who delivered the inaugural 
address, in which, as he himself described it, he gave “‘in as untechnical 
a form as possible, some account of the most generalised expression of 
living matter, and of the results of the more recent researches into its 
nature and phenomena.” Our limited space precludes any attempt at 
even the briefest outline of this erudite and admirable address, a verbatim 
report of which is given in Nature for August 21st, to which we refer our 
readers. All we can dois to give very briefly the substance of a few 
of the introductory sentences. 
SarcopE, as Professor Allman in this address pointed out, was the 
name given more than forty years ago bv Dujardin to the structureless, 
semi-fluid, contractile substance of which the bodies of some of the 
lowest members of the animal kingdom consist. 
Protopitasm.—Hugo yon Mohl found a similar substance to sarcode 
occurring in the cells of plants which he was studying, to which he gave 
the name protoplasm. Max Schultze demonstrated that the sarcode of 
animals and the protoplasm of plants were identical. Subsequent 
researches have confirmed Max Schultze’s conclusions, and it has further 
been rendered certain that protoplasm les at the base of all the 
phenomena of life, whether in the animal or the vegetable kingdom. 
“Thus,” says Professor Allman, ‘‘has arisen the most important and 
significant generalisation in the whole domain of biological science.” 
Tur Puysican Basis oF Lire, says Huxley, is protoplasm. Wherever 
there is life, from its lowest to its highest manifestations, there is proto- 
plasm ; wherever there is protoplasm, there, too, is life. Co-extensive 
with the whole of organic nature, it becomes to the biologist what the 
ether is to the physicist; only that instead of being a hypothetical 
conception accepted as a reality from its adequacy in the explanation of 
phenomena, it is a tangible and visible reality, which the chemist may 
analyse in his laboratory, the biologist scrutinise beneath his microscope 
and his dissecting needle. 
Tur Cuemican Composition of protoplasm is very complex and has 
not been exactly determined. It may, however, be stated that proto- 
plasm is essentially a combination of albuminoid bodies and that its 
principal elements are therefore oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen. 
Tn its typical state it presents the condition of a semi-fiuid substance—a 
tenacious, glairy liquid, with a consistence somewhat like that of the 
white of an unboiled egg. 
Minure GRaNnvues are, under the highest powers of the microscope, 
frequently found disseminated in protoplasm in countless multitudes. 
Protoplasm may also be found to be absolutely homogeneous, and 
whether containing granules or not, it is certain that nothing willbe found 
to which the term organisation can be applied. 
Barnysius HarcKkenm is the name which Huxley gave to a peculiar 
slimy matter dredged in the North Atlantic by the naturalists of the 
exploring ship Porcupine, from a depth of from 5,000 to 25,000 feet. It 
is described as exhibiting, when examined on the spot, spontaneous 
movements, and as being endowed with life. Specimens preserved in 
spirits were subsequently examined by Huxley, and declared by him to 
consist of protoplasm, vast masses of which probably extend in a living 
state over wide areas of sea bottom. Haeckel has since subjected - 
Bathybius to careful examination, and he believes he is able to confirm in 
