NE W CENTRES OF LIFE. 2 1 1 



which they occupy, if each had been endowed with the 

 capacity of inherent movement. The growth of plants is 

 due entirely to the power of the bioplasm to move upwards 

 against gravitation, and every particle of the matter of the 

 highest tree acquired its position above the last deposited, 

 at the time when it was in a living state, by virtue of the 

 inherent moving power of living matter. 



I have often tried to persuade the physicist, who has so 

 long prophesied the existence of molecular machinery in 

 living beings, to seek for it in the "colourless, structureless," 

 bioplasm of the amreba, white blood corpuscle, mucus- 

 corpuscle, or pus-corpuscle. But he contents himself with 

 asserting that such machinery exists, although he can neither 

 see it, nor in any way make it evident to himself or to 

 others. 



Nuclei and Nuckoli or New Centres. In most masses 

 of bioplasm one or more small spherical portions often 

 appearing as mere points are observed, and in some cases 

 these divide before the division of the parent mass takes 

 place. This process, however, is not necessary to the 

 division of the mass of bioplasm, for the latter divides in 

 cases in which no such minute bodies are to be seen, and it 

 frequently happens that one or more of these smaller spots 

 or spherical masses may appear in the substance of the 

 bioplasm, after a portion has been detached from the parent 

 mass. These are to be regarded as new centres, and, like 

 the matter in which they have arisen, are composed of 

 bioplasm. These little centres often grow, and within them 

 a second series of centres is not unfrequently developed. 

 The first have been called nuclei, and those within them 

 nucleoli. At first neither nucleus nor nucleolus has a distinct 



p 2 



