58 BIOLOGY. [Book i. 



or rather serine,^ and plasmine, whicli severed from the living 

 organism, evolves itself into fibrine spontaneously coagulable and 

 into fibiine called liquid. To these albuminoidal substances we 

 must add variable proportions of peptones and albuminose, that 

 is to say, of albuminoidal alimentary substances liquefied and 

 absorbable. 



The blood and the lymph are not homogeneous, physically 

 simple liquids. We meet with, in them, floating bodies which 

 are true free anatomical elements. These bodies have been called 

 globules. The liquids in which these globules swim in immense 

 numbers have received the special name of plasmas. 



These plasmas isolatedly considered are endowed with nutrition ; 

 they are consequently living. They contain in proportions almost 

 equal, immediate principles of the three orders ; nevertheless 

 the coagulable principles predominate. If nutrition ceases iu a 

 plasma, that is to say, if this liquid dies, its composition immedi- 

 ately changes ; the albuminoidal principles which it contains 

 evolve into a liquid portion and another portion spontaneously 

 coagulable. It is this which, in animals provided with a circula- 

 tory system, produces the cadaveric rigidity. 



The office of the plasmas is of supreme importance ; but to 

 obtain a complete notion thereof we must figure to ourselves 

 what every complete organism is from the point of view of tex- 

 ture. At the lowest degree of life and organisation, we find 

 monocellular beings, free anatomical elements, simple infusoria,, 

 living habitually in the water ; for directly or indirectly, the 

 anatomical elements are generally aquatic entities. These the 

 monocellular organism absorbs and assimilates, disassimilates, and 

 secretes, directly borrowing materials from the ambient me- 

 dium, or restoring them to it. In beings a little more complex 

 composed merely of cells identical with each other, and simply 

 juxtaposed, the nutritive process is scarcely more complicated. 

 In effect, the polycellular organism, with cells which resemble 

 each other, is definitively nothing more than a collection of juxta- 

 ' Ch. Robin, Des Tisaus, p. 21. 



