352 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
through powers external to itself ; whatever it may be, the vital 
power is always derived; no known combination of inorganic 
elements or dead forces could have created it. Except in a few 
obscure cases, too ill-understood to be made the basis of a grave 
argument, protoplasm can always be traced, directl}^ or indirectly, 
to some pre-existing form of protoplasm. We nowhere discover 
any power which, without the intervention of some already living 
agent, can convert inorganic matter into living matter. If we 
could even trace back the history of protoplasm, until we reached 
one of Mr. Darwin’s primseval germs, our philosophy would 
still leave the first of these living azotised combinations un- 
accounted for. Since, then, scientific experience affords no 
proof that life is nothing more than a function of material com- 
binations, acted upon by physical forces, we are justified in the 
recognition of a vital principle, emanating primarily from a 
living Creator, but which, once created, appears capable of self- 
perpetuation to the end of time. 
If, having recognised the importance of the study of protoplasm 
amongst the lower animals, we commence its pursuit, we soon dis- 
cover the difficulties which surround it, especially when we discover 
the apparent inadequacy of the causes to the effects produced. 
We see a granular jelly evolving endlessly varied forms of grace 
and beauty ; at one time using silica as its raw material, at another 
carbonate of lime. Here it glues together grains of sand, there 
it develops a new sand-like compound, the very nature of which 
has yet to be discovered. In one form it produces the horny 
network of a sponge — in another the ethereal tracery of an 
Euplectella. The colours of its products are almost as varied as 
their material forms. We seek the cause of all this rich diversity 
— but we seek in vain. We see the almost motionless granular 
jelly investing the objects of beauty which it has constructed, 
but it affords us no indication of the secret of its wondrous power. 
We hail every new fact tending to throw light upon a history 
wliich is as obscure as it is marvellous. Hence the importance 
attached to Prof. Huxley’s discovery of the vast masses of sub- 
marine protoplasm, to which he has given the name of Bathybius. 
When, in 1857, Capt. Dayman, of H.M.S. Cyclops, returned from 
Ids exploration of the bed of the Atlantic, some of his specimens 
of “ soundings ” were placed in the hands of Prof. Huxley for 
examination. The explorers had already noticed the singular 
stickiness of the mud brought up by the lead, and Prof. Huxley 
soon found that this viscid condition arose from the diffusion 
through it of abundance of sarcode or protoplasm of a protozoic 
nature. The mud, like much of what constitutes the bed of the 
Atlantic, consisted chiefly of accumulated shells of Globbigerna 
biilloides — themselves the skeletons of a protozoic sarcode. The 
Bathybius occurred in minute patches of gelatinous protoplasm, 
