OCCURRING IN LIVING PUS. 1 29 



(Fig. 54.*) In. warm weather, I have known the 

 movements continue in pus corpuscles in urine con- 

 taining little of the ordinary urinary constituents, for 

 forty-eight hours or more after the urine had left the 

 bladder.* The very phenomena which take place 

 upon the surface of the mucous membrane of the 

 bladder may in fact be watched for hours under the 

 microscope, and there are few things more beautiful 

 or more instructive. 



The conditions required for the maintenance of life 

 being more complex in the case of some forms of 

 germinal matter than in others, we should conclude 

 that such movements would continue for a consider- 

 able period of time in particles after their removal 

 from their natural habitat, only in the lowest and 

 most degraded forms. This is actually the case, just 

 as some simple creatures are capable of supporting life 

 under a great variety of conditions, while comparatively 



* It is probable that careful observations upon this transparent 

 living moving material will teach us much concerning the nature of 

 life. I think that this subject merits far more attention than it has 

 hitherto received, not only from physicists, chemists,, and physiologists, 

 but from philosophers. I do not think that what will be learned from 

 the study will favour the notions now most popular, but that is no 

 reason why it should any longer be wholly neglected, especially by 

 those who profess to desire to carry their enquiries to the utmost 

 possible limits, but who really cany them a very little way, who, if 

 successful in destroying, are certainly obstructive. Some of those who 

 profess to be most liberal in science strongly object to enquiry being 

 carried beyond the limits they have arbitrarily and without sufficient 

 reason laid down. 



