12 ZOOLOGY SECT. 



reception of certain foreign particles of organic nature i.e. either 

 entire minute animals or plants, or minute fragments of larger 



forms into the interior of the protoplasm. A process of the 



protoplasm is pressed against such a particle, which becomes sunk 

 in the soft substance, and passes gradually into the interior. Here 

 it becomes surrounded by a little globule of watery fluid, and by 

 degrees partially or wholly disappears; the part, if any, which 

 remains subsequently passes outwards from the protoplasm into 

 the surrounding water. The matter which disappears evidently 

 mixes with t(b protoplasm and adds to its bulk. All, in fact, of 

 the matter of the foreign body that is capable of it becomes 

 digested and assimilated by the protoplasm. The globule of watery 

 fluid enclosing the food-particle (for such is the true nature of the 

 foreign body) probably contains some ingredient of the nature of a 

 ferment, capable of acting on certain substances and rendering 

 them more soluble or capable of being more readily taken up by 

 the protoplasm. This we infer mainly from what we know of the 

 digestion and absorption of food in the higher animals ; but the 

 fact, which has been established by experiment, that the Amoeba 

 is able readily to digest certain classes of organic substances, while 

 others, when taken into the interior of the protoplasm, remain 

 unaltered, seems to indicate that some special property, similar to 

 those possessed by the digestive ferments of the higher animals, 

 is present in the watery fluid surrounding the food-particle. 



The movements of the Amoeba, slow and gradual though they 

 are, must involve a certain expenditure of energy or working power ; 

 this can only be derived from the energy of chemical affinity 

 which the protoplasm possesses in virtue of its complex chemical 

 composition. The protoplasm loses some of this energy by its 

 conversion into energy of movement. This loss implies the break- 

 ing up of the complex chemical ingredients of which protoplasm 

 is made up into simpler ones ; the protoplasm falls a grade in the 

 scale of chemical compounds, and by its fall generates the force by 

 means of which the Amoeba moves. The energy of chemical 

 affinity which the protoplasm possesses is thus analogous to the 

 potential energy which the weight of a clock has when it is wound 

 up. As the weight, by virtue of its position, is able as it falls to 

 deal out working power so as to cause the movement of the 

 machinery of the clock, so the protoplasm is able, by the degra- 

 dation or decomposition of its coinpju^ompounds, to deal out 

 working power enabling the Amu -ha to move, in the case of the 

 clock-weight there comes a time when all the potential energy is 

 expended; the weight reaches its lowBFlimit, and unless it is 

 wound up again the clock stops. The like holds good of the 

 Amoeba; the protoplasm is continually being used up broken up 

 into compounds of a lower order and, in course of time, the whole 

 potential energy ivould become exhausted, were it not that a new 



