36 LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
springing fully armed from the head of Jove. If we are 
to adhere to the facts so far observed, we must conclude 
that the plant does not proceed as we should do in the 
laboratory, beginning with the more simply constructed 
compounds and advancing to the more complicated, but 
that the reverse process is the one actually adopted, the 
supposed intermediate products being more probably the 
results of retrogressive metamorphosis.”’ 
It is hardly necessary to point out how this agrees with 
the views expressed above, that the cardinal characteristic 
of living matter in a chemical point of view is the power 
of growth or self-renewal from heterogeneous matter, and 
that in fact growth of protoplasm is the primary element 
in all tissue formation and secretion. It is also very 
interesting to notice how—although given out from a 
standpoint purely chemical—Schunck’s mode of expression 
harmonises with the views of Beale, that all nutrition, 
secretion and function, depend upon the growth and death 
of protoplasm. That, in fact, no secretion, even the least 
complex, is produced by action at a distance, or any 
catalytic action on the pabulum, but that always a cor- 
responding amount of the highly complex protoplasm is 
formed, and this by death and retrogressive metamorphosis 
splits up into the required secretion, while the by-products 
are taken back into the permanent protoplasm, or absorbed 
into the circulation. This ought to reconcile Dr. Beale 
to the abandonment of his word bioplasm in favour of 
protoplasm, which latter word, it may be recollected, 
etymologically signifies ‘‘ that which is first formed.” 
I conclude with a short glossary, embodying the most 
important points in the foregoing pages. 

