1 1 2 Protoplasm. 



one kind of matter which is common to all 

 living beings." 



Notwithstanding the wide diversity that pre- 

 sents itself to our view in the countless varieties 

 of living beings, it yet is true that all vegetable 

 and animal tissues without exception, from that 

 of the brightly coloured lichen on the rock, to 

 that of the painter whj admires or of the 

 botanist who dissects it, are essentially one in 

 composition and in structure. The microscopic 

 fungi clustering by millions within the body of a 

 single fly, the giant pine of California towering 

 to the height of a cathedral spire, the Indian 

 fig-tree covering acres with its profound shadow, 

 animalcules minute enough to dance in myriads 

 on the point of a needle, and the huge leviathan 

 of the deep, the flower that a girl wears in her 

 hair, and the blood that courses through her 

 veins, are, each and all, smaller or larger multi- 

 ples or aggregates of one and the same structural 

 unit, and all therefore ultimately resolvable 

 into the same identical elements. That unit 

 is a corpuscle composed of oxygen, hydrogen, 

 nitrogen, and carbon. Hydrogen, with oxygen, 

 forms water ; carbon, with oxygen, carbonic 

 acid ; and hydrogen, with nitrogen, ammonia, 

 These three compounds water, carbonic acid, 

 and ammonia, in like manner, when combined 

 form protoplasm. 



