1891.] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 125 



Introduction to Elementary Biology. 



By henry L. OSBORN, 



HAMLINE, MINN. 



Part i. — Protoplasm. 



I. Protoplasm is the most marvelous substance in the world. The 

 ancients loved to believe in fairies and genii and other mythical personages, 

 whose beneficent or harmful actions affected man's welfare, and whose 

 performances came under his control who knew the word of command 

 by which they were directed. But the ancients did not go so far as to 

 suppose that these things were so intimately related to man as to really 

 compose his bodily essence. At this point reality transcends the strongest 

 flights of the imagination and fact is verily stranger than fiction. For 

 there is a substance — protoplasm — which pervades all living bodies, 

 however varied their form, however remote their separation in space, 

 which is at bottom alike in all, and which is the active, working, physi- 

 cal agent whose performances we call flight in bird, speech in man, 

 storing starch in the potato, sensibility in the sensitive plant, secretion 

 in the liver, and so on through the catalogue of actions of living things. 

 So far as we know with any positive certainty mind does not act except 

 over the medium of protoplasm to produce effects upon the material 

 universe, and this has led some speculative minds to the very illogical 

 conclusion that mind and protoplasm are identical. Such an inference 

 is no more necessary than the conclusion of a savage, who, hearing a 

 clock strike regularly at every hour, regards such accessory noise as a 

 necessary attribute of a horologue. 



3. Structurally considered, protoplasm is a ver}^ fine-grained sub- 

 stance suspended in slightly saline water. Its consistency is neither 

 fluid nor solid, but gelatinous. A great deal of study has been given 

 to the ultimate structure of protoplasm, but an exact and indisputable 

 statement upon the point cannot yet be made. It is generally supposed 

 that the watery and the solid portions of protoplasm have distinct places 

 in the mass, the latter forming some sort of fibrillar network compar- 

 able perhaps with a sponge, the interstices of which are occupied with 

 the watery portion. The difficulty of understanding the ultimate structure 

 of protoplasm is akin to that in the case of any mass, say n-on, or even 

 water, and is due to the fact that we have to do with intangible mole- 

 cules, and yet a clear and true knowledge of this subject would help 

 vastly in the study of the activities of protoplasm in relation to energy. 



3. Chemically considered, protoplasm is also full of perplexities 

 and its study of difficulties. The chemist can very easily discover car- 

 bon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitj'ogen, sulphur, and phosphorous in proto- 

 plasm, and that there are three classes of compounds. These compounds 

 are the proteids, the carbohydrats and the fats. But when he has reached 

 this point his trouble begins, for he now finds that protoplasm parts with 

 its life the instant he touches it and instant dissolution follows the fatal 

 contact, so that living protoplasm defies direct chemical analysis. And, 

 moreover, the various permutations and combinations of the atoms of car- 

 bon, and so on, are soinnumerable that organic chemistry has become dis- 

 coui-agingly bulky. However, the researches into the chemistry of proto- 

 plasm are on solid ground, and we can say with very great confidence 

 that the solid portions of protoplasm are composed of all three kinds 



