88 BE ALE'S PROTOPLASMIC THEORY. 



to the growth and differentiation up to maturity, while the 

 regressive metamorphosis is spoken of as something different, 

 and opposed to evolution. But Hackel will not allow this, 

 and regards the whole three as parts of one connected whole ; 

 for the regressive metamorphosis of some parts is so intimately 

 connected with the progressive development of others, that no 

 line can be drawn between them.* Now, absorption is an 

 essential part of the process of metamorphosis, and although in 

 the higher orders of organisms most of these metamorphoses 

 and absorptions of temporary parts and organs take x>lace in 

 the embryo, still, even in the adult, the tendency survives in 

 the same degree as the germinal faculty, as is revealed of both 

 in the phenomena of the healing of wounds, and of disease. 

 The persistence of the germinal faculty is also shown by the 

 phenomena of morbid new growths, and also by that of de- 

 generation of the healthy bioplasts which forms such a large 

 element in the causation of inflammation, fever, and the con- 

 tagious diseases. In all these the developmental faculty is 

 degraded to a lower level, while the metabolic and, at times, 

 the plastic faculties are often enormously increased, and there 

 is a corresponding consumption of albuminous pabulum, and 

 excretion of urea and carbonic acid. In the highest kind of 

 protoplasm of all viz., the brain-bioplasts, the germinal 

 faculty must persist throughout the whole life, if, as is most 

 probable, we are to ascribe memory to it. 



Beale, indeed, hardly does justice to his own 

 theory of absorption being the function of the proto- 

 plasm alone in the scanty observations directly 

 addressed to the question ; but it comes out more 

 clearly incidentally in his theory of the connective, 

 bony, and other tissues. 



Instead of the important and numerous uses rather 

 fancifully attributed by Virchow and others to the 

 connective tissue, Beale tbinks it of subordinate im- 



* "Gen. Morph.," vol. ii. p. 18. 



