1 84 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



A pre-natal histological arrangement of the embryonic, 

 and foetal, structures, has been effected which only 

 requires the advent of independent existence to be turned 

 to account to secure the subsequent continuance of life, 

 on the altered post-natal plan, and this consists like the 

 launching of a ship into its future watery element of the 

 opening of hitherto closed sluices and the letting in of the 

 gases, fluids, and solids, of self-sustainment. 



After this process of sluice opening and the inaugura- 

 tion of independent existence, a connected, and continual, 

 series of circulations is evolved, or established and per- 

 petuated which disposes of the alimentary materials, on 

 the principle of continuous evacuation and renewal, or 

 replacement, by the formation of vacua, and vacuoles, and 

 the refilment of them by fresh materials these vacua, and 

 vacuoles, acting as so many suckers, in the economy of the 

 nutritional disposal of tissue pabulum, on the oft-quoted, 

 and conveniently available, principle, that " nature abhors 

 a vacuum" 



The modes of force in use in the accomplishment 

 of these circulatory phenomena are neuro-muscular, or 

 dynamic, action, capillary attraction, and chemical affinity, 

 initiated, and sustained, by vitality, or life ; the circulatory 

 ways, or textural inter-spaces along which the fresh organic 

 plasma, and the effete, or waste tissue products, are 

 conveyed, being organised vessels, tissue porosities and 

 molecular vacuoles, or atomic voids. Activity of the 

 organism and the exercise of the nutritional machinery, 

 cause molecular displacement, or waste of organised 

 texture, or evacuation of the molecular spaces of these, 

 with the consequent creation of molecular vacuoles which, 

 thereafter, " cry out for," and attract, or " suck in," the 

 required molecules of fresh plasma which process keeps 

 repeating itself, as long as the conditions of life are 

 effectively sustained. 



From these statements we are warranted in concluding 

 that all vital processes consist of an unbroken graduated 

 series of circulatory movements along definite organic 

 channels varying in available circulatory capacity from the 

 primary alimentary canal, to the ultimate atomic, or mole- 

 cular, vacuole, and from the ultimate atomic, or molecular, 



