236 Protoplasmic Dynamics. [ April, 
The final decision will probably be that both these processes exist 
throughout the gray protoplasm of the nervous system, but that 
the chemical predominates in the ganglial cells, the vibratory in 
the axial plasma. p 
The third is a presentation of the chief facts-and conclusions 
pertaining to its subject, and with such decided bearings on the 
topic before us that we must notice it more particularly. By 
way of introduction the following statements represent a doctrine 
which is now largely taught and accepted. 
“The question of the source of muscular power is essentially 
a question concerning transformation of energy. The most char- 
acteristic distinction between plants and animals is, that the for- 
mer appropriate force from outside themselves, from sunlight, and 
tore it up as potential energy in the various complex compounds 
which they form in; while animals draw their supplies of force 
entirely from those compounds in which it has been stored up by 
plants, and from which it is set free again when they are decom- 
` posed in the organism.” 
“In a word, the plant converts the actual energy of the sun- 
light into the potential energy of organic compounds, the animal 
converts the potential energy of the organic compounds into 
actual energy, which manifests itself as heat, motion, electricity, 
etc.; in the plant the spring is coiled up, in the animal it uncoils, 
exerting an amount of energy equivalent to that which coiled it. 
One of the forms which this energy takes on is that of muscular 
motion, which we thus trace back to the potential energy of food, 
and through this to that great source of all energy to our earth, 
the sun.” 
“We are not, however, satisfied with knowing in this general 
way that it is the food we eat which serves as a vehicle to convey to 
us our needful supply of sun-force.” — 
We agree that there is “ energy of food,” that “ plants store up 
* * * * energy in the various complex compounds which they 
form in,” but when it is called “sun-force” appropriated “ from 
sun-light” and stored up, we dissent, for it is attractional force 
inherent in terrestrial matter independent of the sun, and from 
which probably none has been received since our globe wasa 
part of her fiery mass. Similarly Professor Carpenter (Correlation — 
and Conservation of Forces, pp. 404-5) speaks, “Thus in either 
case we come, directly or indirectly, to solar radiation as the main 
_ spring of our mechanical power; the ws viva of our whole 
microcosm.” And thus too much power is now-a-days often ae 
tributed to the present influence of the sun and the ungulatory 
