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Transactions of the 
r. Monthly Microscopical 
L Journal, May 1, 1869. 
the same character. Now, this mass of protoplasm, this unit, con- 
sists partly of lifeless and partly of living matter. The outer part, 
which may be dry and hard, and is lifeless, may be undergoing 
disintegration, and is perhaps being taken up by other living or- 
ganisms, but is nevertheless, according to this view, just as much 
protoplasm as the living, growing, moving matter itself. No matter 
how many different things may be comprised in the cell or elemen- 
tary part, no matter in what essentially different states these things 
may be, no matter how different parts may differ in properties — they 
constitute protoplasm. A muscle is protoplasm ; nerve is proto- 
plasm ; bone, hair, and shell are protoplasm ; a limb is protoplasm ; 
the whole body is protoplasm. No anatomical investigation is neces- 
sary to enable us to detect this substance. Every beast, fowl, 
reptile, worm, or polyp that we see is protoplasm. Everything 
that lives or has lived is protoplasm. 
Let me now draw your attention to a new form of protoplasm, 
which has been much discussed of late, and concerning the nature 
of which much difference of opinion is entertained. From the pro- 
toplasm of the amoeba and certain forms of foraminifera, we pass to 
larger and more extended masses of this substance, included under 
the head of "urschleim," and constituting the organisms of the 
simplest animated beings, which have been included by Hseckel in 
the genus Moner. I refer to this part of my subject with diffidence, 
for I have not given much attention to it. It would, however, be 
wrong to omit all mention of what is at the same time very 
interesting and of great importance. I shall therefore quote the 
observations of others so far as they appear to me to bear upon the 
consideration of the nature of protoplasm. 
In the ' Microscopical Journal ' for October, 1868, is a memoir 
by Professor Huxley " On some Organisms living at great Depths 
in the North Atlantic Ocean," in which he states that the stickiness 
of the deep-sea mud is due to " innumerable lumps of a transparent 
gelatinous substance," each lump consisting of granules, coccoliths, 
and foreign hodies, imbedded in a " transparent, colourless, and 
structureless matrix." The granules form heaps which are some- 
times the ToVo*^ of an inch or more in diameter. The " granule " 
is a rounded or oval disc, which is stained yellow by iodine, and is 
dissolved by acetic acid. " The granule heaps and the transparent 
gelatinous matter in which they are embedded represent masses of 
protoplasm." One of the masses of this deep-sea " urschleim " may 
be regarded as a new form of the simplest animated beings (Moner), 
and Huxley proposes to call it Bathyhius. The " Discolithi and 
the Cyatholithi,'' some of which resemble the " granules," are said 
to bear the same relation to the protoplasm of Bathyhius as the 
spicula of sponges do to the soft parts of those animals ; but it must 
be borne in mind that the spicula of sponges are imbedded in a 
