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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 355 



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vVoL. XIV. 



NEW YORK, November 22, 18 



No. 355 



CONTENTS: 



Xeather Link Belting 343 



Nyassa-Land and its Commercial 



Possibilities 344 



Health Matters. 



Immunity and Immunization 346 



Inoculation against Inflammation of 



the Lungs in Cattle 347 



The Hearing of School-Children. . . 347 



■Confectioners" Disease 347 



•Curious Transmission of Scarlet- 

 Fever 347 



Mental Science. 



Mental Activity in Relation to Pulse 



and Respiration 347 



Distance and Size 348 



Sensibility to Tone Intervals 348 



Electrical News. 



Siemens's Five-Lead System 348 



Lens Images made Visible by Elec- 

 tric Current 340 



An Electric Radiation Meter 349 



Driving Tuning-Forks Electrically. 349 

 On Electrifications due to Contact 

 of Gases and Liquids 349 



Notes and News 349 



Protoplasm and its History 352 



Thr Ornithologists' Meeting — 35s 



Book-Reviews. 



The Continuous Creation 356 



The Public Regulation of Railways 356 

 Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk- 

 Tales 356 



Electricity in our Homes and Work- 

 shops 356 



The Works o' Walter Bagehot 357 



Among the Publishers 357 



Letters to the Editor. 

 The Various Discoveries of Lake 

 Mistassini A. P. Low 359 



Industrial Notes. 

 Liquid Drawing-Ink 359 



PROTOPLASM AND ITS HISTORY. ' 

 In the department of biology there are three subjects of tran- 

 •scendent interest ; namely, protoplasm or living matter, develop- 

 ment, and adaptation. In fact, the interest in some phases of these 

 subjects is now so general and deep that the special students in 

 this department feel that they have to a great e.\tent the sympathy 

 and co-operation of the public at large. This interest renders pos- 

 sible the construction of such commodious laboratories as this the 

 Satest acquisition of the University of Toronto, in which we are 

 mow permitted to meet. The generous halls and adequate equip- 

 ment of this laboratory and other biological laboratories throughout 

 our country and Europe testify to the existence of a widespread 

 belief that the new natural history has very much to learn and 

 much to teach in regard to many of the great problems of life. 



In the annual gatherings of the members of our section for the 

 exchange of views and for better fellowship, it has been found ex- 

 pedient for us to look at one or the other of these three subjects 

 at the outset of our work in a somewhat broad and yet special 

 manner. 



Your chairman for the present year asks the privilege of select- 

 ang as his topic for the introductory address the first of the sub- 

 jects mentioned. You are invited to examine the more recent ad- 

 ditions to our knowledge of protoplasm, restricting the examination 

 to discoveries in the field of botany. 



* Address delivered by Professor George L. Goodale of Harvard University, as 

 -vice-president of the Biological Section of the American Association at Toronto, 

 Aug. 28, 1889 . 



Whether we consider protoplasm, or the living matter of plants 

 and animals, from the point of view of physics, of chemistry, of 

 physiology, or of philosophy, we have before us a topic which has 

 received, and which continues to receive, the most assiduous at- 

 tention. Hence its literature, though comparatively recent, is ap- 

 pallingly voluminous ; and any attempt to treat the subject, or any 

 considerable part of it, exhaustively, within the limits properly im- 

 posed upon introductory addresses, would result in annoyance to 

 you and utter discomfiture for me. Apropos of this, I am reminded 

 of a series of experiments upon protoplasm, conducted in a German 

 laboratory, w'hich will illustrate the embarrassment which the case 

 presents. The study to which I refer was with regard to certain 

 organisms of very low grade. At a given period in the life of 

 these organisms, their microscopic masses of protoplasm become 

 confluent in such abundance that sufficient material can be pro- 

 cured for experiments on a large scale. In the special investiga- 

 tion referred to, a considerable quantity of protoplasm obtained in 

 this way was subjected to enormous pressure. You can anticipate 

 the result : there remained behind only a shrunken residue of what 

 we may call, without figure of speech, the most juiceless and the 

 driest of husks. 



This natural result of extreme compression has stared me in the 

 face during the preparation of the present address. A similar re- 

 sult is more than likely to follow my attempt to bring within 

 very narrow limits the subject which I have chosen for your con- 

 sideration. 



The word " protoplasm " was coined by Hugo von Mohl in 

 order to designate certain active contents of the vegetable cell. 



We shall gain in clearness of vision by letting our glance rest 

 first on the results of investigating vegetable cells and cell contents 

 anterior to Von Mohl's time, in order that we may see some of the 

 steps by which this term was reached by him. The compound 

 tpicroscope was not applied seriously to the examination of the 

 structure of plants until about fifty years after its discovery by 

 Drebbel. In 1667, Robert Hooke of England published an account 

 of his investigations of minerals, plants, and animals under the 

 microscope, and gave excellent illustrations of what he thought he 

 saw. His first reference to the structure of plants is in his de- 

 scription of charcoal, and this is followed by a good account of 

 common cork. In these brief and fairly accurate descriptions, the 

 author makes use of the word "cell," applying the term to the 

 cavities in charcoal and in cork. 



Hooke's interesting treatise was soon followed by two remark- 

 able memoirs, — one by an Italian, the other by an Englishman. 

 Malpighi of Bologna sent to the Royal Society of London in 1670 

 a work entitled " Anatome Plantarum." The published volumes 

 bear the dates 1675 ^"^ 1679. At the period these volumes 

 were in the hands of the Royal Society, Nehemiah Grew, secretary 

 of the society, was engaged in work almost identical with that of 

 Malpighi ; but there is no good reason to believe, as was formerly 

 intimated, that he was indebted to Malpighi for any of the state- 

 ments which he published as his own. It is, however, best for us 

 to consider these two works together. By Grew the term " cell " 

 appears to have been applied to the cavities in what we may term 

 the softer tissues of the plant. It is certain that neither Malpighi 

 nor Grew recognized, as we can now, the multifarious forms of 

 vessels, fibres, long cells, and the like, as referrible to a common 

 source. There is always a strong temptation to read in an old 

 text some meaning which squares with our own notions ; and one 

 is greatly tempted to think that these assiduous investigators. Grew 

 and Malpighi, detected the relationships which we know exist be- 

 tween the different elements of vegetable structure. But after 

 giving them the benefit of every doubt, one fails to find in their 

 writings any recognition of such affinities. On the contrary, these 

 investigators were engaged in a study which naturally led them 

 away from such conceptions. They were busy with descriptive 

 work, outlining the arrangement of tissues in all organs of the 

 plant which their knives could reach. They did not even break up 

 the tissues into elementary parts, but they described and delineated 

 with great skill the tissues as they were displayed in sections. Is 

 it not incredible that these first works on vegetable structure, pre- 

 pared only a few years after the earliest application of the com- 

 pound microscope to the study of plants, should have remained for 



