PROTOPLASM. 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE KENDAL NATURAL HISTORY 

 ASSOCIATION, OCT. 2ND, 1913. 



JHAVE chosen for the subject of my Address to-night that 

 peculiar and as yet, in many respects, mysterious form of 

 matter called Protoplasm, of which are or were formed the 

 bodies of all organisms, whether animal or vegetable, that not only 

 now dwell upon, cover, and vivify the surface of the earth, but 

 which, through unnumbered ages in the past, have built up rocks 

 hundreds, nay thousands, of feet in thickness and covering millions 

 of square miles of area throughout the world. I desire, if time 

 permits, to speak of its origin and mode of growth, its nature and 

 properties, and the wonderful manner in which it builds up and 

 repairs when necessary the bodies of all organic creatures ; and 

 how by its operation they are fruitful, multiply, and replenish the 

 earth. For every student of Natural History, every member of 

 our Association whatever branch of Natural Science he selects 

 for his study and to which he restricts his investigations, must 

 perforce come sooner or later to study and endeavour to understand, 

 as far as he can, its character and properties, if he would rightly 

 and thoroughly comprehend either the living organisms he examines 

 or their fossil remains. 



Origin. 



In recent times protoplasm is nowhere found but in the cells of 

 animals and plants, and as all the organisms existing at the present 

 day, arose from preceding organisms of the same or similar kinds, 

 and they in their turn, generation after generation, from others 

 that produced them ; and as all these, both recent and ancient, live 

 or did live in an inorganic world of the same character from the 

 earliest times till now, we are justified in believing that this has 



