EXTRACT II. B. 



ON THE MINUTELY PARTICULAR, OR NUTRITIONAL, 

 AND METABOLIC CIRCULATION. 



SUCCEEDING the great blood circulation proper, in the 

 centre of which is situated the great dynamic circulatory 

 organ, the heart, the neuro-muscular walls of which 

 propel its life-supporting materials into every ' ' hole and 

 corner," "nook and cranny" of the entire body, and 

 commencing at the great organic "watershed" is the 

 metabolic circulation. The term "watershed," as used 

 here, is to signify that all the preparatory or preceding 

 stages of circulation, and all the consequent or succeeding 

 stages of circulation are subsidiary, and only subservient 

 to the process of nutritive circulation and metabolic 

 selection, where the incorporation and detention of the 

 nutritive protoplasm is relatively, but not really, an 

 exception to the existence, even in this seemingly solid 

 and immobile region, of the presence of circulation. 

 Thus a "watershed" signifies the dividing line which 

 determines what direction moisture deposited on it must 

 take in order to reach a level, or the level of the nearest 

 sheet of water, and ultimately the level of the sea. What 

 here is not licked up by the wind, or vapourised by the 

 rays of the sun, after lingering for a brief period in 

 balanced and pellucid liquidity, or gelid plasticity, like 

 the arrested molecules of the nutritive pabulum in the 

 interstices of the tissue matrix, resumes, by the inexorable 

 influence of gravitation, its onward circulation or progress, 

 resting not until it has reached its temporary or more 

 permanent destination, which must be determined by its 



