26 FORMATION OF PROTOPLASM. 



retained their innate motions, and these 

 were of course combined and modified 

 by the immense number of combinations 

 and re-combinations through which they 

 had to pass in their long progress up to 

 those of the immensely complex body 

 called protoplasm. l 3 



In such processes as these Nature works 

 so slowly and with such infinitesimal 

 quantities that we cannot see, cannot even 

 imagine, the processes and quantities ; 

 she has no need for the chemist's laboratory 

 or his retorts and balances ; and she does 

 not permit the microscopist to see these 

 processes under his microscope. Chemists 



13 Writing on the actions of chemical proteids and 

 ferments, Mr. Herbert E. Davies, analytical chemist and 

 microscopist, states : " All evidence goes to show that these 

 changes are what are called hydrolytic changes, that is to 

 say the proteid molecule takes up a molecule of water, and 

 splits up in so doing into two molecules of new substance, 

 and these molecules each take another molecule of water, 

 and in so doing split up into two further molecules, and 



so on This building-up operation may be supposed 



to occur indefinitely ; more and more complex molecules 

 being formed, with increasing complexity of function. . . . : 

 At some stage in the increasing complexity we begin to get 

 a range of functions, the ferment actions ; akin to vital 

 action, but simpler." Presidential Address : Liverpool 

 Microscopical Society, 1901, by Herbert E. Davies, M.A. 

 (Cantab.), B.Sc., (Lond.), F.I.C. 



This has been very conclusively displayed by Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer, in his Principles of Biology, see p. 482., Vol. I. 



