30 LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
depends on the result of organisation, viz. organism. 
Huxley uses the word organisation in the double sense 
both of the process and the result, and in addition really 
means structure more or less rigid and palpable to the 
a3 
senses. In defining ‘‘ organism or organic structure,”’ as 
the result of the process of organisation, Fletcher also 
appears to be ambiguous; but he explains, on the next 
page, the use of the word structure as a general term for 
the material presentment of organised beings, and under 
that word he includes the composition of the living matter. 
According to this, a mass of protoplasm without any 
visible structure is still to be described as “‘ organism,” 
and to have undergone the process called ‘‘ organisation.”’ 
In the same sense, Bastian speaks of protoplasm as 
possessing “molecular organisation.’’ He should have 
said ‘‘ organism,” or molecularly organised matter, if the 
above limitation of organisation to the process is to be 
adopted. In fact the use of the word ‘‘ organised,” as 
synonymous with vital or living,* is so nearly universal 
* The word organised can only apply with propriety to a peculiar combina- 
tion of the elements of the protoplasm as a whole, and not to a mere changed 
molecular grouping, such as allotropism, of the proteid or other proximate 
principles, into which it is resolved at death as asserted or implied by Negeli 
and Pfeffers. Nor can the physical movements or changes caused by the 
molecular state of the protoplasm, as, for example, a colloid capable of a 
distinctly limited degree of imbibition with water be called vital or organised. 
As said by Strasburger, all organised substance is colloid, but not all colloids 
are therefore organised. Berthold (1886) has extended considerably our 
knowledge of the important part played by the physical properties of the 
protoplasm as an emulsion in growth and sub-division ; but even Dr. Beale— 
a vital principlist—admits that in the smallest mass of living matter something 
physical belongs to its functions just in the higher creatures with visible 
structure. And Berthold—a non-vital principlist—after urging as far as possible 
the physical actions derived from the molecular grouping of the pretoplasm, 
denies that therein lie the true characteristics of the living matter: these lie in 
the ‘‘ peculiar course of the interactions of the totality of its matter and forces ” 
(p. 81). These remarks suggest a further limitation of Bastian’s expression 

