OR BIOPLASM. 



93 



of which the amoeba, white blood-corpuscle, pus-corpuscle, 

 &c.. were composed. These last I represented as naked 

 masses of living matter, and objected to apply to them the 

 term protoplasm, because so many textures which were not 

 living were said to consist of that substance. My con- 

 clusions were summed up as follows : "In all living beings 

 the matter upon which existence depends is the germinal 

 matter (Bioplasm), and in all living structures the germinal 

 matter possesses the same general characters although its 

 powers and the results of its life are so very different."* 



It has been asserted that contractility is a peculiar cha- 

 racteristic of protoplasm, but any one who takes the pains 

 to study the movements, will find that the contractile 

 movement of the amoeba, white blood-corpuscle, &c., is a 

 phenomenon very different from the contraction of mus- 

 cular tissue. In the first, movements occur in every direc- 

 tion, while the last is characterized by a repetition of move- 

 ment in two definite directions only. And when we come 

 to study the matter which is the seat of these two kinds of 

 movements respectively, we find very important differences. 

 The matter of the amoeba, white blood-corpuscle, &c., 

 grows. It takes up matter unlike itself, and communicates to 

 it its own properties. Now, muscular tissue does not do 

 this. In short, the first kind of matter acts and moves 

 of itself; but the last can only be acted upon and made to 

 move. The first may be compared with a spring, as yet 

 undiscovered, which not only winds itself up and uncoils, 

 but every part of which moves in any direction, and can 

 make new springs out of matter which has none of the pro- 

 perties of a spring ; the last with an ordinary spring which 



* Lectures at the College of Physicians, 1861. 



