266 Mr W. Gardiner, On the continuity [Nov. L3, 



Nov. 13, 1882. 

 Mr Glaisher, President, in the Chair. 



The following communications were made to the Society : 



(1) On the Structure of the Spleen. By J. N. Langley, 

 M.A, and C. S. Evans, B.A. 



(2) On the continuity of the protoplasm in the motile organs 

 of leaves. By W. Gardiner, B.A. 



Any one who has studied the development of biological research 

 fox the last few years cannot but be struck by the gradual evo- 

 lution of grand generalisation: the similar explanation of dissimilar 

 phenomena : the classification of hitherto unclassinable facts. And 

 to start on what we should have said was the widest possible 

 basis, nothing can illustrate this statement better than the 

 gradual and complete break down of that hard-and-fast line of 

 distinction which existed between the animal and vegetable king- 

 doms. Step by step we have seen each difference disappear, and to 

 those of us who have followed it, the reason has been plain. We 

 study the properties of protoplasm. We shall expect an exhi- 

 bition of those properties. It is a matter of secondary importance 

 where that protoplasm happens to be. True it is that in different 

 organisms some property or properties will be accentuated more 

 than the rest : the maximum and minimum of each will constantly 

 alter as we pass in review over the whole ; but among the many 

 variations we shall recognize the one true air : the difference will 

 be one of degree, not of kind. And so when the student of plant 

 life follows the properties of protoplasm, as set forth in a well 

 known text-book, it becomes at once apparent that they are all 

 exemplified in his kingdom : a Htematococcus is to him what 

 an Amoeba is to the Comparative Anatomist. 



We can, then, no longer attempt to establish any binding- 

 distinction. Any general statements made are open to exception. 

 Thus, as Bergh has very recently shewn, the possession of a cell 

 wall and the power of manufacturing complex proteid material 

 from simple chemical compounds must no longer be regarded as 

 characteristic peculiarities, for they are both shared by the Cilio- 

 flagellata, and though perhaps Darwin makes rather an astonishing 

 statement when he compares a young growing radicle to a burrow- 

 ing animal, and forcibly suggests that its tip acts like a lowly 



