PR TO PL A SM IN THE CL UDS. 



as much an independent structure as Thalassicolla or Col- 

 losphcera, and that, as in other cases, " nutrition is effected 

 by a vital act," which enables the organism to extract from 

 the surrounding medium the elements adapted for its nutri- 

 tion. These are at length converted into its sarcode and 

 shell material. In fact, in these lowest simplest forms, we 

 find evidence of the working of an inherent vital power, and 

 in them nutrition seems to be conducted upon the same 

 principles as in the highest and most complex living beings. 

 In all cases the process involves, besides physical and 

 chemical changes, purely vital actions, which cannot be 

 imitated, and which cannot be explained by Physics and 

 Chemistry. Such is the mode of solution of that in- 

 teresting fiction evolved from the scientific imagination 

 Bathybius. 



Protoplasm in the Clouds. Nothing corresponding to 

 Bathybius has yet been discovered above the clouds, but 

 some philosophers have, with the aid of the imagination, 

 pictured to themselves what may be revealed by visions in 

 the distant future. Matter of inexhaustible potentiality 

 in an impalpable state of division, having very subtle 

 powers, may be supposed to fill the interspaces be- 

 tween the minute atoms of material ether distributed 

 through the void of space. Potential matter, such as is 

 supposed, remarkable for the mobility of its constituent 

 atoms, and for its highly complex molecular constitution, 

 would, by virtue of such properties, easily resolve itself into 

 living particles of extraordinary minuteness. By the aggre- 

 gation of these, the minute germs from which originate 

 many of the simpler forms of life, would be formed. Thus 

 we might account for the origin of the multitudes of organic 



