very different matter and much more difficult. You may put to- 

 gether carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in due proportions, and shake 

 them all together, or heat them or cool them, and yet you will 

 never get them to combine again so as to make sugar. 



The analysis of dead protoplasm, animal or vegetable, is an easy 

 matter, and consists of carbonic acid, water and ammonia. But no 

 chemist has ever succeeded by synthesis, and probably never will 

 succeed in putting these three simple ingredients together again, 

 and thus making protoplasm. Chemical investigation can tell us 

 little or nothing, directly, of the composition of living matter, 

 inasmuch as all such matte, must needs die in the analysis. Out 

 of these three simple forms of matter, carbonic acid, water and 

 ammonia, the vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm which 

 keeps the animal world agoing. Withdraw any of these simple 

 elements from the world, and all vital phenomena comes to an end. 

 They are related to the protoplasm of plant life as the protoplasm 

 of the plant is to that of the animal. It will thus be seen that 

 plants are the accumulators of the power which animals distribute 

 and disperse. We must bear in mind that no animal can make 

 protoplasm, but must take it ready-made from some other animal 

 or plant, the animal's highest feat of constructive chemistry being 

 to convert dead protoplasm into that living matter of life which is 

 appropriate to itself Therefore, in seeking for the origin of pro- 

 toplasm we have to turn to the vegetable world. The animal can 

 only raise th'' complex substance of dead protoplasm to the higher 

 power, as one may say of living protoplasm, while the plant can 

 raise the less complex substance, carbonic acid, water and ammonia, 

 to the same stage oi livi7ig protoplasm. The fluid containing car- 

 bonic acid, water and ammonia, which offers such a Barmecide 

 feast to the animal, is simply a table richly spread to the multitudes 

 of plants, and, with a due supply of only such materials, many a 

 plant will not only maintain itself in vigor, but grow and multiply 

 until it has increased a million-fold the quantity of protoplasm 

 which it originally posses.sed, in this way building up the matter of 

 life, to an indefinite extent, from thecotnmon matter o{ the umvQvsc. 



No matter under what guise it takes refuge, whether fungus or 

 oak, worm or man, living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and 

 is resolved into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but it is always 

 dying, and strange as the paradox may sound, could not live 

 unless it died. 



Notwithstanding all the fundamental resemblances which exist 

 between the powers of protoplasm in plants and animals, they 

 present a striking difference, in the fact that plants can manufac- 

 ture fresh protoplasm out of minerals and mineral compounds, 

 whereas animals are obliged to procure it ready-made, and hence, 

 in the long-run, depend upon plants for their supply. At the 

 present time we may look upon protoplasm as the basis of physical 

 life in the same sense that some form of it is the essential and 

 active constituent of every living cell or tissue, whether vegetable 



