1 882.] Organic Compounds in their Relations to Life. 977 



beings, but as we might almost say, in a mineral state, wholly dis- 

 connected from such beings. There is no more doubt that it is a 

 natural product than there is that ammonia is such a product. 

 Its composition has been ascertained with considerable accuracy, 

 and is found to be substantially the same under whatever form it 

 may occur. According to the highest authorities this substance 

 contains, approximately, fifty-four parts of carbon, twenty-one parts 

 of oxygen, sixteen parts of nitrogen, seven parts of hydrogen, 

 and two parts of sulphur in one hundred parts. These propor- 

 tions doubtless vary somewhat, and traces of other ingredients 

 may, perhaps, be occasionally detected, but the above description is 

 sufficient to fix the chemical character of protoplasm. To write 

 its symbolic formula is impossible in the present state of science, 

 but so is it still impossible, to write that of the albuminoids with 

 any reliable accuracy. Their numerous isomeric forms show us 

 that the grouping of the molecules is subject to constant 

 changes. This is doubtless true to a far greater extent of pro- 

 toplasm. It is a substance whose molecular units are probably 

 compounded of the units of the proteine bodies, which enter 

 bodily into them in the same manner that oxygen and hydrogen 

 enter into water, or, as we suppose ammonia, carbonic acid, and 

 the compound radicals to enter into the more complex organic 

 compounds. 



The many conditions under which protoplasm is found to exist 

 on the globe; may for convenience, be divided into two general 

 classes : the free, and the dependent state. It is a matter of fact 

 that it is found in a free state under a number of forms, both in the 

 sea and in fresh water, and such bodies as Haeckel's Protogenes, 

 and Huxley's Bathybius are simply representatives of it in 'this 

 condition. On the other hand, protoplasm is present in all organ- 

 isms, whether animal, vegetable, or protist, and of which, though 

 small in relative quantity, it constitutes by far the most important 



pendent, amorphous, and spontaneously developed form of proto- 

 plasm above described from that which is found in the tissues of 

 organisms and inseparable from them, Professor I laeckel proposes 

 to apply to it the term plasson, or plasson bodies, which, while it 

 should not lead to the notion^hat there is any essential difference 

 in the matter itself, is convenient to aid in retaining the concep- 

 tion, not generally acknowledged, of its purely chemical character. 



