vertebrae, it is forgot that there is still implicated the 

 wonder which we ought to feel at the unknown power 

 that could, in the end, so differentiate them. If the 

 cornea of the eye and the enamel of the teeth are alike 

 but modified protoplasm, we must be pardoned for 

 thinking more of the adjective than of the substantive. 

 Our wonder is how, for one idea, protoplasm could be- 

 come one thing here, and, for another idea, another so 

 different thing there. We are more curious about the 

 modification than the protoplasm. In the difference, 

 rather than in the identity, it is, indeed, that the wonder 

 lies. Here are several thousand pieces of protoplasm ; 

 analysis can detect no difference in them. They are to 

 us, let us say, as they are to Mr. Huxley, identical in 

 power, in form, and in substance ; and yet on all these 

 several thousand little bits of apparently indistinguish- 

 able matter an element of difference so pervading and 

 so persistent has been impressed, that, of them all, not 

 one is interchangeable with another ! Each seed feeds 

 its own kind. The protoplasm of the gnat will no more 

 grow into the fly than it will grow into an elephant. 

 Protoplasm is protoplasm : yes, but man's protoplasm 

 is man's protoplasm, and the mushroom's the mush- 

 room's. In short, it is quite evident that the word 

 modification, if it would conceal, is powerless to with- 

 draw, the difference ; which difference, moreover, is one 

 of kind and not of degree. 



This consideration of possible objections, then, is the 

 last we have to attend to ; and it only remains to draw 

 'the general conclusion. All animal and vegetable or- 

 ganisms are alike in power, in form, and in substance, 

 only if the protoplasm of which they are composed is 

 similarly alike; and the functions of all animal and 



