90 PROTOPLASM. 



is supposed to be the less important; and it has been re- 

 garded as mere water, holding certain matters in solution. 

 This, however, is really the living, growing, and moving 

 protoplasmic substance j while the threads and walls of the 

 spaces are composed of matter which has ceased to manifest 

 active properties matter which no longer lives, but which 

 has \)QQn. formed from the living matter. 



We may fairly ask if this lifeless, passive, formed matter, 

 which cannot move, or grow, or multiply of itself, which is 

 but a product of the death of protoplasm, is nevertheless to 

 be called by the same name as the living, moving substance 

 which it once was ? If this be so, there ought to be no 

 recognizable difference between matter which is actually alive 

 and the substances which result from its death. 



So far, then, we have seen that the term protoplasm has 

 been applied to the matter within the primordial utricle of 

 the vegetable cell, to that clear substance which undergoes 

 vacuolation and fibrillation, and also to the matter forming 

 the walls of the vacucles, as well as to the threads or 

 fibrillae. Still more recently, Von Mohl's primordial utricle 

 has been called protoplasm by Professor Huxley, who some 

 years before restricted the term to the matter within the 

 primordial utricle, which matter at that time he regarded as 

 an " accidental anatomical modification " of the endoplast, 

 and of little importance.* The nucleus, and with it the 

 protoplasm, Mr. Huxley thought, exerted no peculiar office, 

 and possessed no metabolic power. But Mr. Huxley has 

 changed his views without one word of explanation con- 

 cerning the facts which led him to modify them, or even an 

 acknowledgment that he had changed them. Mr. Huxley 

 * "The Cell Theory," " Med. Chir. Rev.," October, 1853. 



