1885.] Recent Literature. 375 
p. I the ordinary student will stand aghast at the following sen- 
tence: “The matter of unorganized bodies (for instance of crys- 
tals) is in a state of stable equilibrium, while through the organ- 
ized being a stream of matter takes place.’ Do not streams 
generally flow? The punctuation is also defective, and cases of 
tautology occur. Why at this date there should be any distinc- 
tion, even if in words, expressed between sarcode and protoplasm 
we do not understand. p. 21 we find the following sentences 
in the section on the difference between animals and plants: “In 
the place of muscles, which as a special tissue are absent in the 
lower animals, there is present an undifferentiated albuminous 
substance known as sarcode, the contractile matrix of the body. 
The viscous contents of vegetable cells, known as protoplasm, 
possesses likewise the power of contractility, and resembles sar- 
code in its most essential properties.” There is vegetable and 
animal protoplasm, but why give different names to what is fun- 
damentally the same substance? Throughout the succeeding 
pages the word protoplasm is used for the contents of animal 
cells, and we read no more of sarcode. 
The translator has, on p. 70, referred to the “ spiral thread” of 
an insect’s trachea, sufficient liberty might have been taken with 
the original to have given the latest and most correct view as to 
the structure of the trachea and the mode of tracheal respiration, 
pears, 
but the excellence of the majority of the figures and the judg- 
