240 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [Sep 
dilution has a great influence on the rapidity of the granu- 
lations in my artificial protoplasm. 
Now, the gray substance contains more water than the 
substance in the cerebellum, and this has more than the 
white substance of the brain and medulla (R. Dubois). 
The neuroplasm has doubtless its currents, and the vari- 
ations exhibited in their rapidity, as well as the shocks 
of their molecules and the waves produced, perchance, by 
the passage of the current from a conductor with a big 
calibre to a thinner one, may result in certain nervous 
and continuous actions or sensations, external stimuli 
provoking the vibrations, as I have studied in mercury.* 
On the other hand, Dubois says that anesthetics produce 
the expulsion of internal water, and I have observed that 
exhalations of ether have the property of energetically 
repelling any thin layers of water (‘Ou a Property of 
Ether,’ Memorias y Revista Sociedad Alzate, 1895-96, 
Nos. 5, 6, p. 33). This means that anesthetics modify 
the rapidity of the currents or even succeed in completely 
preventing them. 
The action of alcohol on my artificial product is curi- 
ous, there being a remarkable excitation of the move- 
ments followed by their absolute paralysis. 
In the sea-urchin egg says Dubois, segmentation can 
be prevented by hindering hydration by the addition of 
of salt at 2 per cent to the sea water. When segmenta- 
tion has already begun, it stops in a strongly salted 
medium, but it pursues its course directly after some 
normal water is poured on it; and, what appears more 
notable, it then continues with increased rapidity. I have 
observed analogous phenomena in artificial protoplasm. 
In a word, the protoplasmic currents have a. construc- 
tive or formative action comparable to that wrought by 
rivers on the earth’s surface. 
* Natural Science, December, 1898. 
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