NUTRITION 



The fresh-formed animal plasm is then broken up by 

 oxydation, and by this analysis the energy needed for 

 the vital movements is obtained. 



The physiological contrast which we thus find between 

 the two principal forms of living matter, the synthetic 

 plasm of the plant and the analytic plasm of the animal, 

 is of great importance for the lasting maintenance 

 of the whole organic world. It depends on a reversal 

 of the molecular movement in the plasm, the intimate 

 nature of which is just as little known to us as the 

 chemical constitution of the albumins in general, and 

 that of living albumin, the plasm, in particular. As I 

 mentioned in chapter v., modern physiological chemistry 

 has good reason to beli6ve that the invisible albumin- 

 molecule is, comparatively speaking, gigantic, and is 

 composed of more than a thousand atoms. These 

 are in such an unstable equilibrium, so complicated and 

 impermanent an arrangement, that the slightest push or 

 stimulus suffices to alter them and form a new kind of 

 plasm. As a fact, the number and variety of kinds of 

 plasm are immense. This is seen at once from the 

 ontogenetic fact that the ovum and sperm-cell of each 

 species (and each variety) have a specific chemical 

 constitution. In reproduction this is transmitted to the 

 offspring. But, setting aside these countless liner 

 modifications, we may distinguish two chief groups of 

 kinds of plasm: the phytoplasm of the plant, with the 

 synthetic property of plasmodomism, and the zooplasm 

 of the animal, which is destitute of this property, and so 

 confined to plasmophagy. 



The remarkable synthetic process of building up the 

 plasm, to which we give the name of plasmodomism, or 

 carbon-assimilation, usually needs as its first condition 

 the radiant energy of sunlight. Every green plant-cell 

 contains in its chlorophyll-granules so many tiny labora- 

 tories, their green plasm being able to form new plasm 



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