232 LIFE AND DEATH. 



there are In nutritive assimilation itself two distinct 

 acts. The one consisting of the manufacture of 

 reserve-stuff is the more obvious but the less 

 specific ; the other, really essential, is assimilation 

 properly so-called, the reconstitution of the proto- 

 plasm. The former is indispensable to the pro- 

 duction of the most prominent acts of vitality — 

 movement, secretion, production of heat. If it is 

 suspended, functional activity is arrested. We get 

 apparent death, or latent life. But if the real assimi- 

 lation is arrested, we have real deatli. 



According to this there would be a fundamental 

 distinction betyveen real and apparent death. The 

 former would be characterized by an arrest of the 

 protoplasmic assimilation which is externally indicated 

 by no sign. On the other hand, apparent death 

 would be characterized by the arrest of the formation 

 and destruction of reserve-stuff. It would be ex- 

 ternally manifested by two signs : — The suppression 

 of material exchanges with the medium (respiration, 

 alimentation) and the suppression of the functional 

 acts (production of movement, of heat, of electricity, 

 of glandular excretion). 



Such would be the most expedient test for apparent 

 or real death. The question occurs in the case of 

 grains of corn in Egyptian tombs, and also of 

 hibernating animals and revlvlscent beings, and, in 

 general, in the case of what has been called the state 

 of latent life. But from the practical point of view 

 it is extremely difficult to apply this test and to 

 decide if the phenomena which are arrested in the 

 grain at maturity, in Leeuwenhoek's tardigrada,^ 



^ Bear-animalcules, Sloth-animalcules. An order of Arach- 

 nida. — Tr. 



