NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
Professor Huxley and Dr. Beale on Protoplasm. The eloquent 
lecture “On the Physical Basis of Life,” which Professor 
Huxley gave before a popular audience in Edinburgh last 
January, has been made the subject of a somewhat severe attack 
by Dr. Lionel Beale, in a communication read to the Micro- 
scopical Society of London, and published in its Journal for 
May, 1869. Dr. Beale seeks to show that Professor Huxley 
has misrepresented the usual meaning of the term protoplasm, 
or has given it a new and absurd signification in conformity 
with a preconceived physical theory of life. Meanwhile, 
there are persons who have been asking, what is protoplasm ? 
Even some of those who should know well enough already. 
Dr. Beale’s attack on Professor Huxley, therefore, complicates 
matters, since it lends some show of reason to the doubts and 
difficulties expressed by certain uninformed readers of the 
* Fortnightly Review.’ I wish here, as an independent 
student, to state, in opposition to the criticisms of Dr. Beale, 
that it did not appear to me, in reading the printed lecture of 
Professor Huxley, that he had used the term protoplasm in 
any other than its usual, normal, and legitimate signification, 
and I gather from that lecture that Professor Huxley’s defi- 
nition of protoplasm would probably exclude and include 
exactly the same things which Dr. Beale’s would. Dr. Beale 
has criticised Professor Huxley’s broad and general state- 
ments — admirably adapted to the comprehension of a general 
audience — as though they contained a full confession of his 
faith qud cell structure and histology generally. This, I 
submit, with the greatest deference to Dr. Beale, is hardly 
fair; and as his communication to the Microscopical Society 
appears to misrepresent the views of the highest authority on 
biological science in this country, I venture, not forgetting 
the sincere regard which all microscopists must have for Dr. 
Beale, to reply to the criticisms. Probably, as far as those 
are concerned who have read the lecture and know' Professor 
Huxley’s views and the exceeding improbability of his making 
the announcements attributed to him, these notes wfill be 
superfluous, but there are some to w'hom they may be useful. 
