EVIDENCE PROVING THE STATEMENT OF THE CASE 99 



And continues Professor Huxley, "The student of 

 Nature wonders the more and is astonished the less, 

 the more conversant he becomes with her operations ; 

 but of all the perennial miracles she offers to his in- 

 spection, perhaps the most worthy of admiration is the 

 development of a plant or of an animal from its embryo. 

 Examine the recently laid egg of some common animal, 

 such as a salamander or a newt. It is a minute 

 spheroid in which the best microscope will reveal 

 nothing but a structureless sac, enclosing a glairy fluid, 

 holding granules in suspension. 1 But strange possi- 



an ordinary chicken's egg. Here we find only Heat is required to 

 develop the perfect organism, the chicken, for we can perform the 

 operation by means of an. incubator, that is, a heat-developing 

 apparatus. 



1 This is a common description for the egg-cell in its initial condi- 

 tions. Now as a great many eggs are developed in water and quite 

 away from the influence of the parent, and each egg produces the 

 like of the parent, it must follow the contents of each species of egg 

 must consist of different species of molecules. This shows that as an 

 instrument of analysis of molecular structure the microscope fails. 

 There must be protoplasms and protoplasms. 



' Chemistry of the Egg, . . . The subtle protoplasm itself, it 

 need hardly be said, defies analysis." (" The Evolution of Sex," 

 Prof. P. Geddes and J. A. Thomson, 1889, p 104.) 



" Protoplasm is regarded as an exceedingly complex and unstable 

 compound, undergoing continual molecular change." Idem, p. 87, 



" Protoplasm is excitable. When any part of a lump of proto- 

 plasm is excited, the lump moves. When many lumps of protoplasm 

 are gathered into a homogeneous mass, excitations and movements 

 may be transmitted from lump to lump in all directions. . . . An 

 amoeba is a simple lump of protoplasm, excitable and con tractile in all 

 parts of its substance, and not more so or less so in one part than in 

 .another." (" An Introduction to Human Physiology," A. D. Waller, 

 M.D., F.R.S., 1896, p. 290.) 



" The literal meaning of the word excitation is ' call from with- 



H 2 



