CHARACTERS OF BIOPLASTS. 



been already shown. At the deep aspect of the 

 cuticle, and below the fully formed epithelium of 

 mucous membranes and some glandular organs, are 

 masses of germinal matter, which continue to divide 

 and subdivide in the same way throughout life. These, 

 in the ordinary course, move towards the surface, and 

 as they move, each gradually forms upon its surface 

 the hard cuticular matter (cell-wall) to which the 

 properties of the epidermis are due, see Plate IX, 



fig- 39- 



It has been already said that the bioplastic masses 

 of different organisms, and those in different parts of 

 the same organism, possess different endowments. 

 For from one kind of bioplasm is formed muscle, from 

 another nerve, from another fat, and so forth, but yet 

 all these kinds have directly descended from one. 

 They could not be distinguished from one another, 

 nor from the primary mass from which they came, by 

 any microscopical or chemical characters. Neither 

 could one of these kinds of bioplasm in the adult 

 develop a mass capable of producing the rest. Al- 

 though no one could distinguish one particle from the 

 other, each will produce its kind, and that alone. It 

 would be as unreasonable to expect an amoeba to 

 result from a pus-corpuscle, or from a yeast particle, 

 or to suppose that by any alteration in food or man- 

 agement a cabbage would spring from a mustard 

 seed, or the modern white mouse from the descendant 

 of an ancestral white rabbit, as it would be to maintain 



