96 Notices of Books. (January, 
quantity of their body-matter is alive at any period of existence. 
The living matter or bioplasm, in which wonderful changes occur 
as long as its life lasts (which changes cannot be explained by 
physics and chemistry), can be examined at any time, and the 
principal and most remarkable phenomena can be demonstrated 
with the aid of a y:th of an inch object-glass magnifying 700 
diameters. Bioplasm exists in all living beings, and upon it 
their structure, composition, and actions depend. ‘There is 
not,” says Dr. Beale, ‘‘at any period of life, in health, or disease, 
a portion of any tissue of man’s body the size of a pin’s head, 
with perhaps the single exception of the teeth of the adult and 
in old age, that does not contain some of this living matter 
or bioplasm in which purely vital phenomena take place. 
Every tissue may be divided anatomically into elementary 
parts. Each elementary part consists of the living matter or 
bioplasm, and the lifeless formed matter (cell-wall, envelope, 
tissue, intercellular substance, periplastic matter) produced at 
the moment of the death of the particles of the first. Formed 
matter accumulates in the tissues as age advances, and thus 
interferes with the free access of nutrient matter to the bioplasm.” 
In examining tissues under the microscope, it is a very advan- 
tageous fact that the bioplasts, the germ of each cell, may be 
artificially and permanently coloured by an ammoniacal solution 
of carmine, and thus every particle of living matter in a tissue 
can be clearly distinguished. And what will be seen, say in a 
small portion of the thick layer of epithelium covering the 
papilla of the tongue, is a number of little particles of living 
matter, often less than the 1-2000th of an inch in diameter, 
separated from one another at tolerably equal distances by the 
material they have produced. ‘These living bioplasts attract 
through the pores of the lifeless matter already formed by them 
materials suitable for their nutrition. Thus we can see how the 
new elementary parts gradually grow up from beneath and 
supply the place of the old ones which are cast off from the free 
surface. But these phenomena cannot be explained by physics 
and chemistry, or without calling in the aid of the hypothesis of 
vital power. ‘‘ Elements which have the strongest affinity for 
one another are separated from their combinations, and, perhaps, 
made to combine with elements with which they have no 
natural tendency to unite; and all this is effected, not as we see 
it done in the laboratory by the skilful chemist after prolonged 
experience and with the aid of complex contrivances, but silently, 
and, as it were, by a fiat, without any apparatus whatever.” 
It cannot, then, be said that the matter of the world and its 
material forces necessarily give rise to the development of life ; 
life must be regarded as transcending mere matter and its 
forces—a later gift of an All-Wise Omnipotence. 
