Minutes of Froceedings. 261 



In these researches you have had to coast along the very confines 

 and thresholds of life, where analysis fails to discern further distinc- 

 tions, and contents itself with giving to the primal stuff of organi- 

 zation its shadowy name of Protoplasm. This familiarity with the 

 beginnings of life in the animal kingdom has largely influenced your 

 views and methods in investigating plant physiology, where your 

 successes have been the more immediate inducement to this distinction 

 conferred on you by the Academy. In your Papers laid before us on the 

 Cell-structure of several sorts of Algge, you have disclosed to us the cell 

 in its first observable constitution, free of a surrounding wall, and 

 have traced, in and from it when surrounded, out-reaching filaments, 

 endowed with life and movement, in communication with equally open 

 adjoining cells. This continuity of life-action from cell to cell, is a new 

 phenomenon, and must be taken into account in future speculation on 

 the irritability of cellular tissue. Another Paper of yours on a unicellu- 

 lar parasite of these Algse is also recognized as a notable contribution to 

 knowledge. In these parasites on healthy vegetation, multitude makes 

 up for minuteness, and simplicity of action gives uniformity and conti- 

 nuity to the mischief. The protaplasm out of which this parasite 

 originates possesses the property of developing certain carbon-gathering 

 particles ; and these, in search of their aliment, for they cannot eliminate 

 it from the air, go in quest of it among the tissues of higher organisms. 

 This greedy instinct of the lower forms of life it is which makes 

 vegetable revolution and anarchy in men's vineyards, corn fields, and 

 potato plantations. If a man could, while treading the path you have 

 pursued among t\io?,eAIgce and Fmigi, either see beyond the protoplasmic 

 veil on one side, or see how to supply the cravings of these carbon- 

 eating parasites by some other provision of their nutriment on the 

 other, he would, in the first case, bring us a step nearer to the 

 Pirst Great Cause, and might, possibly, in the second confer on man- 

 kind a boon almost worthy to rank with the fabled gifts of Triptolemus. 

 These are strong temptations to the observer to diverge into theory ; 

 but, undisturbed by them, you have taken the philosophic course of 

 noting and recording what you have seen of these spores issuing 

 from their primary sac, and burying themselves among their food in the 

 carbon-built tissues of higher organisms; and, in those higher organisms, 

 of the extrusion from the vital source, whatever that be, lying hid in its 

 protoplasmic nest, of the successive detachments of members which con- 



