121 



BULBILS AND GEMM^. 



By FRED. H. DAVBY. 



It is a characteristic of the present age that it delights in 

 crisp definitions and clearly-defined distinctions. Distracted at 

 the magnitude of the field of knowledge which stretches before 

 us, we try to minimise our ignorance by pegging out the universe 

 into delightfully small parcels ; and foiled in our attempts to solve 

 the mysteries of life, we have commissioned our Huxleys and 

 Spencers to state our difficulties in formulas couched in the most 

 recondite philosophic phraseology. Our eagerness to sum up 

 questions might well suggest to the impartial observer that we 

 hurry so much as to be guUty of constructing a cosmogony with- 

 out first caring to see whether our pieces have structural affinity. 

 Notoriously is this the case in matters biological. As long as 

 we are dealing with things which can be heard with the ear, 

 seen with the eye, and touched by the hand, we are not likely to 

 go far astray ; but, when we grapple with the intangible and 

 have to work largely with the eye of faith, it is to be feared that 

 even the greatest rush to strange extremes. 



A school of philosophers has arisen in these later days which 

 has parcelled off the ultimate functions of all forms of life into 

 growth and reproduction, and therefrom they construct remark- 

 able definitions. Albeit the most powerful microscope has failed 

 to warrant the distinction, we are asked to believe that living 

 organisms, whether animal or vegetable, are composed of germ- 

 cells and germ-plasm, and somatic-cells and somatic-plasm. If 

 the facts of the case were corroborative of this nice distinction, 

 it would be of little moment whether or not the microscope has 

 revealed the presence of a plasm which subserves reproduction 

 as distinguished from that which elaborates purely vegetable or 

 animal tissue ; but in the light of present knowledge we may 

 gravely doubt, whether, when we talk of the two kinds of plasm, 

 we do not set up a distinction which nature does not recognise. 

 If there be such a clear line 'of demarcation, it is rather 

 remarkable that under certain conditions the somatic-plasm 



