PARTICLES OF BIOPLASM. 



145 



suspended was the fertilizing agent, and that the 

 spermatozoa themselves were merely epithelial debris, 

 and quite unimportant ; or to infer that the fluid in 

 which the yeast fungi or bacteria were growing, was 

 the active agent in exciting fermentation while the 

 actually growing, moving and multiplying particles 

 were perfectly passive. The germinal particles in all 

 cases are, without doubt, the active agents, and it 

 seems to me as much opposed to the facts of the case 

 to maintain that the materies morbi of cattle plague 

 and other contagious fevers is a material that can be 

 dissolved in fluid, and precipitated and reformed, or 

 sublimed as a volatile substance, as it would be to 

 look upon any living organism as the result of the con- 

 centration of an albuminous solution, and capable of 

 resolution and precipitation. 



The little particles represented in Plate XVIII, 

 fig. 66, could not be distinguished from the minute 

 particles of pus, Plate XV, fig. 54*, or other germs of 

 living germinal matter, and I think they consist of a 

 peculiar kind of living matter, the smallest particle of 

 which, when supplied with its proper pabulum, will 

 grow and multiply, giving rise to millions of little 

 particles like itself, each having similar properties and 

 powers. 



I consider it to be almost certain that the material 

 of which these particles are composed has the power 

 of forming matter like itself from pabulum around it, 

 which differs from it in properties and composition. 



