1880. | Frotoplasmic Dynamics. 237 
forces, and too little to the attractional forces of matter. The 
author speaks of the force several times as “potential” and 
“latent” energy, but these words in such connection are ne 
no more than blanks. This valuable conclusion agrees with that 
of Professor Flint (and others),—“ All the facts seem to indicate 
‘that muscular force originates in a splitting up of some substance 
in the muscle accompanied by the liberation of force” (p. 822). 
The next conclusion should be that combining power is the only 
immediate force that can be freed by fission among muscle mole- 
cules, This will appear if we thoroughly understand the nature 
and relations of the powers in question, for it is necessary to dis- 
tinguish all forces sharply into two groups: 1, the aééractional 
(gravity, adhesion, cohesion, chemism), and 2, the zmpactive or 
momentum forces of masses, molecules and atoms (in mass- 
motions, sound, electricity, heat and light). Those of one group 
are not convertible into, but oppose those of the other, and while 
the latter set may, by opposition, often disengage the former, the 
latter are but the recoi (which may propagate itself) from the ac- 
tions produced by the former group. 
V. The plasma-affinity, which is the joint action of its freed 
attractions, is its imbibing force, exerting a hydraulic suction 
power, manifested in a circulation into the part affected and the 
resultant swelling of the same, from which all the mass motions 
of organisms proceed. 
he initial movement is the circulation among the attracting 
molecules with its general direction toward the point where the 
greatest amount of chemismic power is being freed, and: such as 
necessarily precedes chemical unions of dilute fluid constituents 
with those of fixed, elastic, porous bodies; for the matter im- 
ibed consists of the water solution of oxygen, nutriment and 
disengaged plasma-molecules. Most common examples of ex- 
Pansive and circulatory movements resulting from combining — 
Power are not in their details parallel with those of the proto- 
plasmic substance, The activities from heat and from affinities 
freed by heat in ordinary combustion, which naturally come to- 
mind first, present an altogether different case. If the combin- 
ing element, oxygen, was only in a solution permeating every- _ 
_ Where to act throughout the entire mass, the resultant ac- 
tivity would be, instead of a swelling of heated surrounding air, e 
Semion of the solid mass, And we must alte gobs a 
