264: DR. DUFFIN, ON FROTOPLASM. 
Beale maintains that the germinal matter in every cell 
possesses the power of active movement; and in individual 
masses this movement takes place in a direction from cen- 
tres. To it all processes of cell multiplication are referred. 
Beale considers that each spherical particle of living or ger- 
minal matter is itself composed of smaller spherules. In any 
spherule new centres of growth may arise. A piece of ger- 
minal matter may be detached from the parent mass, “the 
“yucleus” remaining behind intact, but a new nucleus may 
arise as a new centre in the detached portion, and a nucleolus 
may arise in the nucleus, and so on. Formation is, accord- 
ing to this observer, the conversion of germinal matter into 
formed material, in which process the matter loses its vital 
power, but acquires new properties and a definite composi- 
tion. Formed matter was once germinal matter, and this 
was once pabulum. The pabulum having become “living 
matter,’ moves outwards, as spherical particles, from the 
centre where the change occurred, like the particles of living 
matter which existed before. What appears to be a fluid, ex- 
hibiting certain streams or currents, really consists, according 
to him, of a number of minute spherical particles of living 
matter, every one of which possesses the power of movement. 
These living particles can be seen very readily with the 25th 
of Messrs. Powell and Lealand in the Vallisneria and Trades- 
cantia. The larger bodies, consisting of formed material, 
such as starch-granules, chlorophyl, &c., are forced on in 
the currents produced by the movements occurring in the 
particles of living or germinal matter. All movements ob- 
served in ‘ germinal matter” are regarded by Beale as depen- 
dent upon the peculiar “vital”? endowments of the ultimate 
living particles of which it is composed. 
