THE BIOLOGY OF DAILY LIFE. 69 



forms with great rapidity, drawing in and 

 thrusting out prolongations of their substance, 

 and creeping about as if they were independent 

 organisms. 



" The substance which is thus active is a 

 mass of protoplasm, and its activity differs in 

 detail rather than principle from the proto- 

 plasm of the nettle. Under sundry circum- 

 stances the corpuscle dies and becomes 

 distended into a round mass, in the midst of 

 which is seen a smaller spherical body, which 

 existed but was more or less hidden in the 

 living corpuscle, and is called its nucleus. 

 Corpuscles of essentially similar structure are 

 to be found in the skin, in the lining of the 

 mouth, and scattered through the whole 

 framework of the body. Nay, more ; in the 

 earliest condition of the human organism, in 

 that state in which it has but just become 

 distinguishable from the egg in which it arises, 

 it is nothing but an aggregation of such cor- 

 puscles, and every organ of the body was 

 once no more than such an aggregation. 



" Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm turns 

 out to be what may be termed the structural 

 unit of the human body. As a matter of fact, 

 the body, in its earliest state, is a mere multiple 

 of such units variously modified." 

 Here, in all its fulness, I have given the Huxleian 

 rendering of his own theory. The noxious leuco- 

 cyte, the amasba of the blood, is taken as the very 

 creator of man. Here is the first u consequence " (as 

 Herschel would say) of this wondrous theory. Here, 



