34 EX VIRIBUS VIVIMUS. 



organism might possess a greater store of vital force 

 or life-power than another, without there being some 

 material representative of that force. Hence we 

 must — whether taking force or matter as our text — 

 look for some matter in the young which disappears 

 in the old. Protoplasm, the physiological basis of 

 life, which no doubt is the same thing as that which 

 Dr.Beale terms 'germinal matter,' is a matter which 

 by its increase or accumulation in an organism must 

 increase its power — in fact, its amount of life ; and, 

 conversely, when diminished, the amount of life must 

 be diminished. It is from the changes of this 

 germinal matter that the formed tissues result, that 

 repair is effected, force evolved, nutriment elaborated, 

 secretion manufactured ; and it is a matter of ob- 

 servation that this germinal matter is more abundant 

 in young than it is in aged organisms. The numerous 

 preparations of tissues, and their description by 

 Dr. Beale, the result of his carmine process, clearly 

 demonstrate this, and it is on all hands admitted. 

 The quotation which follows from Mr. Paget is a 

 fair description of that diminution of repairing power 

 to which we shall have to refer, whilst Dr. Marshall 

 Hall has largely detailed the decline of the vital 

 powers in old age : — 



'Some people, as they grow old, seem only to 

 wither and dry up : sharp-featured, shrivelled, and 

 spinous old folk, yet withal wiry and tough, clinging 

 to life, and letting death have them, as it were, by 



