78 BEALE'S PROTOPLASMIC THEORY. 



and among them, invariably, nitrogen. Likewise, the 

 passage from the living to the dead state is abrupt, 

 and with no intermediate stage. How then can a 

 portion of protoplasm be said to die into a binary or 

 ternary compound, which arrange its elements as you 

 please never could, by any possibility, have been in 

 the living state ? Starch, sugar, and other carbo- 

 hydrates, and the hydrocarbons, and even carbonate of 

 lime, silica, carbonic acid, and water, are said to result 

 from the death of protoplasm. With respect to some 

 of these, Dr. Beale considers that the taking up of 

 oxygen at the moment of passing from the vital to the 

 chemical state, and subsequent changes of the matters 

 originally formed by the protoplasm which in certain 

 cases, e.g., the secretion of the epithelial cells of the 

 kidney, no doubt take place may account for the 

 reduction of formed material to simpler compounds. 

 But this cannot account for the production of the 

 great bulk of the ternary or binary compounds, the 

 starch and fat, for example, which appear in the middle 

 of the protoplasm of the cells. Dr. Beale hardly 

 meets the difficulty in the following words, and it 

 seems as if he were unwilling to attempt merely 

 speculative explanations, trusting to the evidence in 

 favour of the protoplasmic theory as a whole, and 

 leaving it to time to furnish the explanation of the 

 how of the process. 



" We know that the nutrient matter makes its way 

 to the very centre of the living particles, and that it 

 there becomes changed. Certain of its elements are 

 re-arranged, and the material particles immediately 

 acquire powers they never possessed before. Then 



