^Tumai, MarfisG^T ^oyol MicTOScopical Society. 281 
to me incompatible with many facts, some of which have been 
alluded to by Mr. Huxley himself."^ I doubt if in the whole range 
of modern science it would be possible to find an assertion which 
seems more at variance with facts familiar to physiologists than 
the statement that "beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, 
worm, and polype " are composed of " masses of protoplasm with 
a nucleus," unless it be that still more extraordinary assertion that 
what is ordinarily termed a cell or elementary part is a mass of 
fvoto^lasm ; — for can anything be more unlike the semi-fluid, active, 
moving matter of an amoeba, than the hard, dry, passive, external 
part of a cuticular cell or of an elementary part of bone. I cannot 
forbear quoting in this place the following passage, which seems to 
me to require explanation. After stating that the substance of 
a colourless blood-corpuscle is an active mass of protoplasm, Mr. 
Huxley remarks that " under sundry circumstances the corpuscle 
dies and becomes distended into a round mass, in the midst of 
which is seen a smaller spherical body, which existed, but was 
more or less hidden in the living corpuscle, and is called its 
nucleus. Corpuscles of essentially similar structure are to be found 
in the skin, in the lining of the mouth, and scattered through the 
whole framework of the body." Now, what can be meant by a 
white blood-corpuscle dying and becoming distended into a round 
mass under sundry circumstances ? Mr. Huxley goes on to say 
that at an early period of development the organism is " nothing 
but an aggregation of such corpuscles," that is, of corpuscles (ele- 
mentary parts or cells) like those " found in the skin, in the lining 
of the mouth, and scattered through the whole framework of the 
body." This assertion is incorrect, inasmuch as the corpuscles in 
the embryo consist almost entirely of (living) matter like the 
white blood-corpuscle, while those of which the skin (cuticle) and 
most of the tissues of the adult are composed consist principally of 
formed matter with a very little of the other (living) matter, and 
in some cases the particles of cuticle are entirely composed of hard 
formed matter. Here, as in other cases, no distinction is drawn 
between that which is living, growing, and forming, and that 
which has heen formed and is destitute of all ^oivers of life and 
growth. No distinction between living matter and lifeless matter ! 
Both are confused together under the term protoplasm, for which 
might be substituted " organic matter " or "albuminous matter." 
Huxley terms the particles of epithelium of the cuticle and of 
mucous membranes, masses of protoplasm. He says beasts and 
fowls, reptiles and fishes, are all composed of structural units of 
* " The original endoplast of the embryo cell," Huxley says, in 1853, " has 
grown and divided into all the endoplasts of the adult," and " the original peri- 
plast has grown at a corresponding rate, and has formed one continuous and con- 
nected envelope from the very first." 
