1885.] 
Is Death Universal ? 
69 
the result of some accident. Hence immortality is ascribed 
to them in a sense which is not dependent on the ordinary 
definition of the term.” 
Mobius now asks — Is this idea of immortality applicable 
to the Protozoa which propagate hy fission ? Do they per- 
sist as individuals until their life is destroyed by some out- 
ward agency ? 
He replies that adult Protozoa, in their fissiparous gene- 
ration, leave no part of their body behind which can die. 
But they cannot on that account be regarded as immortal, 
for, on fission, their individual existence is gradually extin- 
guished, and comes to an end in the moment when the 
daughter-offsets separate from each other. With the con- 
clusion of the process of fission the mother-individual ceases 
to live, but the substance of its body carries on the same 
specific functions in the effects, and indeed with a rejuvenated 
susceptibility to external impression, which in the aged indi- 
viduals had been gradually fainter and fainter, and had 
finally ceased altogether. 
To this it may be replied that there are only two alterna- 
tives — death or deathlessness. If death occurs let the dead 
body — the mass of organised matter which has ceased to 
perform any vital function — be produced. Failing this evi- 
dence we must recognise deathlessness. When a mono- 
cellular Protozoan is killed by heat or poison, we have this 
dead body to produce. Consequently where it is not pro- 
ducible we fail to recognise true death. 
Dr. Mdbius continues — Whilst the bodily substance reacts 
more faintly to outward impressions, there appear in its 
interior striking movements which precede the fission of the 
maternal body, and evidently subserve the rejuvenescence of 
such substance for its progeny. 
The retraction of the cilia, the disappearance of the 
flagella, the rounding off of the body, and its incapsulation 
before fission must enfeeble the irritability of the older indi- 
viduals. The young offshoots begin their individual life 
with great susceptibility to external impressions, because 
their bodily substance consists of freshly-located molecules, 
and because the surface of their body is greater in propor- 
to its mass than the superficies of the mother shortly before 
fission. 
When an Infusorium completely uses up its entire body 
in the production of two, four, or eight young ones, every 
part of such body remains alive, — i.e., the atomic groups, of 
which every offshoot consists, continue their life-work ac- 
cording to" the same morphological, physiological, and 
