92 THE BIOLOGY OF DAILY LIFE. 



from that tiny point until universal scorn and shame 

 will put a stop to these abominable absurdities. Say it 

 again, Clathrocystis roseo-persicina. Does it trouble 

 your tongtfe ? Think what tortures that chamber-full 

 of poor dogs and rabbits and guinea-pigs, and countless 

 other patients in similar chambers, must have throbbed 

 through, while that useful name was being piled 

 together, and that "show" elaborated.* 



" Science is, I believe, nothing but trained and 

 organized common sense" says Professor Huxley. Be 

 it so. 



Then in what department of science shall we place 

 these methods and these names ? 



Whence comes this method of testing organisms by 

 chemical re-agents (not chemically analysing, ac- 

 cording to the fair methods of animal chemistry), but 

 classifying them as organisms by their behaviour under 

 aniline dyes ! 



Read again this description of protoplasm, and you 

 see from what these players take their cue. 



" Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the 

 formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the 

 potter, which, bake it and paint it as he will, 

 remains clay separated by artifice and not by 

 Nature from the commonest brick and sun- 

 dried clod" (Huxley's Lay Sermons). 



* The spirit of Domine Sampson, if one could so wrong that 

 kindly pedant as to give him a part in this cruel fellowship, 

 appears to have stood godfather in one instance, closely allied to 

 the bacterium rubescens, as being chromogenic, this is the micro- 

 coccus prodigiosus. It is blood-red, and " the cells are the 

 smallest of all pigment micrococi." 



" He grinned like an ogre, swung his arms like the sails of a 

 windmill, shouted ' Prodigious' till the roof rung to his raptures." 

 " Guy Mannering" chap, xviii. 



