74 DERIVA TION OF FUNGI 



and vegetable tissues. I have often seen them within 

 vegetable cells in which not a pore could be discovered 

 when the tissue was examined by the highest powers. 

 I have detected them in the interior of the cells in 

 the tissues of animals, and in the very centre of cells 

 with walls so thick and strong that it seems almost 

 impossible that such soft bodies could have made their 

 way through from the surrounding medium. How 

 are we to account for the presence of living particles 

 in such situations ? I have no doubt that ere long the 

 theory will be advanced that the living matter of the 

 cell, and the formed material of which it is composed, 

 become changed, and assume the condition of bio- 

 plasm of a lower grade of organisation. Thus, it will 

 be said, from one form of living matter a lower and 

 more degraded form is evolved, the lowly germs spring- 

 ing from the living matter of the cell itself. And it 

 might be alleged that the same forces which were once 

 active in the cell, become active in the new organisms 

 which grow and multiply after it has ceased to live. 



Such simple germs are, as has already been 

 stated, from time to time found in the blood of 

 man, and to them various disturbances, ending in 

 death, have been attributed. They have been looked 

 upon as the germs concerned in the production of 

 disease and in the destruction of life much higher 

 than their own ; but the matter on which they live 

 has ceased to take part in the actions of the higher 

 life, and instead of being decomposed into noxious 



