50 BEALE'S PROTOPLASMIC THEORY. 



pus-corpuscles, and other morbid products, are of the 

 same nature. It is also by similar movements that de- 

 tached protoplasm masses which form the germs of 

 contagious diseases " climb, as it were, through still, 

 moist air, just as the amoeba and certain other living 

 particles are capable of climbing in any direction 

 through water which is in a state of perfect rest. 

 Minute particles, possessing their inherent powers of 

 active movement, can insinuate themselves into the 

 slight chinks in fully formed tissues, in every part of 

 the body, and may easily make their way along the 

 crevices between the protective epithelial cells into the 

 tissues beneath, and thus through the thin walls of 

 the smallest vessels into the blood." 



This power of movement, Dr. Beale thinks, is also in- 

 strumental in producing the peculiar form of certain 

 tissues in the higher animals, e.g., in " the formation 

 of the elastic cartilage of the epiglottis, it seems 

 probable that each mass of bioplasm revolves while it 

 forms delicate fibres, which accumulate, and at length 

 appear to be arranged concentrically round the space 

 in which it lies," as the caterpillar spins its cocoon. 



" is to be sought neither in diosmosis, nor in the action of the nuclear 

 vesicle, nor in any mechanical contrivance such as cilia, but it lies 

 rather in the constitution of the self-moving protoplasm, which, as an 

 especially nitrogenous body of the nature of that simple contractile 

 animal substance called sarcode, produces the rhythmically advancing 

 contraction and expansion." " If we compare the sarcode substance 

 of the lowest animals, such as the Rhizopods, with the protoplasm as it 

 usually presents itself in plants, the correspondence of both in form, 

 contraction, and activity is, in fact, very surprising." This is subse- 

 quently confirmed by the observations of Max Schultze on the Fora- 

 minifera and the Actinophrys Eichornii. He concludes that the visible 

 movement of the granules has its seat in the substance of the con- 

 tractile protoplasma itself, and not in fluid contained in, and set in 

 motion by, the contraction of the protoplasm as supposed by Briicke 

 and Heidenhain ("Protopl. der Rhiz," 1853 p. 66). This is now 

 universally admitted. 



