1901} MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 63 
is protoplasm and is also an ameba. I speak advisably. 
For it is an amoeba, for chemically or otherwise it cannot 
be distinguished from a living thing which we call an 
amoeba. We have then seen life beginning and begun a 
living thing, an ameeba. 
Now what is the origin of this living thing, this ame- 
ba, this mass of protoplasm ? From what do they or it or- 
iginate? From protoplasm as botanists call it, from sar- 
code as zoologists term it. This is the ‘physical basis of 
life” as Huxley termed it,the origin or beginning of force 
or energy, the ‘jelly specks” of the biologist. And going 
no further back than these ‘‘jelly specks” can we deter- 
mine their beginning? I donotsee how we can, and yet 
we can appreciate the origin of those ‘“‘jelly specks.” But 
we must determine and appreciate their wiilachey material- 
istically also. | 
We cannot see how they originate from unseeable, un- 
recognizable matter. But we can see if we watch unsee- 
ables change to seeable matter. I do not know how itis 
possible, but it is possible, although our eyes are not 
strong enough to see it. We see what is before them and 
still is unseeable with any power of the highest magnify- 
ing lenses which we now have. For that cannot re7eal 
even the ultimate molecules of the physicist, and the > 
molecules are of course unseeable. Let us begin therefore 
where we can see. 
As I have said,when we view the mass of water which 
contains protoplasm in it,or if we take the white of an egg 
and wait until it changes, which it does in time, it pu- 
trifies, we say. It then becomes alive, Bacteria or Monads 
appear in it, and this it does when it is covered up 
out of contact withthe air. It so putrifies also. Bacteria 
appear also, and life is formed. We cannot know how 
it is but we see it. Wesee that our water is transparent, 
But while we are looking at it there appears a certain 
darkening as it may be called, or a shadowy appearance 
