Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/697

Rh colonies, which extended over a period of two years. Though he not infrequently fell markedly below his own standard of excellence, Binney exercised an influence as a preacher, especially with young men, such as few have wielded for so long a period. A manly, vigorous intellect, fearless independence of judgment, a lively imagination, showing itself chiefly in frequent flashes of happy illustration, a keen, sarcastic humour chastened but of deliberate purpose not altogether repressed, a direct forcible style, a commanding presence, and a pleasant musical voice sufficiently account for his popularity. He was the pioneer in a much needed improvement of the forms of service in Nonconformist churches, and gave a special impulse to congregational psalmody by the publication of a book entitled The Service of Song in the House of the Lord. Of numerous other works the best known is his Is it Possible to Make the Best of Both Worlds? an expansion of a lecture delivered to young men in Exeter Hall, which attained a circulation of 30,000 copies within a year of its publication. A very happy specimen of his peculiar powers as an author is his Money, a Popular Exposition in Rough Notes (1864), which also had a large circulation.

 BINTANG, one of the islands which mark the south side of the Strait of Singapore. The latter is the exit towards China and Siam of the great channel which we call the Straits of Malacca. Bintan lies between 104° 13′ and 104° 40′ E. long., with a central latitude of 0° 52′ N. It has an area of about 440 square miles, and is surrounded by many rocks and small islands, making navigation dangerous. The soil is not fertile, and much of it is swampy. The chief product is gambir, of which upwards of 4000 tons are annually exported, with pepper and some other spices and fruits. The island is a good deal visited by Malay and Chinese traders. The highest hill in it is 1385 feet high, and there are five rivers, but these navigable only by small boats.}}

 

HE Biological sciences are those which deal with the phenomena manifested by living matter; and though it is customary and convenient to group apart such of these phenomena as are termed mental, and such of them as are exhibited by men in society, under the heads of Psychology and Sociology, yet it must be allowed that no natural boundary separates the subject matter of the latter sciences from that of Biology. Psychology is inseparably linked with Physiology; and the phases of social life exhibited by animals other than man, which sometimes curiously foreshadow human policy, fall strictly within the province of the biologist.

On the other hand, the biological sciences are sharply marked off from the abiological, or those which treat of the phenomena manifested by not-living matter, in so far as the properties of living matter distinguish it absolutely from all other kinds of things, and as the present state of knowledge furnishes us with no link between the living and the not-living.

These distinctive properties of living matter are—

1. Its chemical composition—containing, as it invariably does, one or more forms of a complex compound of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, the so-called protein (which has never yet been obtained except as a product of living bodies) united with a large proportion of water, and forming the chief constituent of a substance which, in its primary unmodified state, is known as protoplasm.

2. Its universal disintegration and waste by oxidation; and its concomitant reintegration by the intus-susception of new matter.

A process of waste resulting from the decomposition of the molecules of the protoplasm, in virtue of which they break up into more highly oxidated products, which cease to form any part of the living body, is a constant concomitant of lira. There is reason to believe that carbonic acid is always one of these waste products, while the others contain the remainder of the carbon, the nitrogen, the hydrogen, and the other elements which may enter into the composition of the protoplasm.

The new matter taken in to make good this constant loss is either a ready-formed protoplasmic material, supplied by some other living being, or it consists of the elements of protoplasm, united together in simpler combinations, which consequently have to be built up into protoplasm by the agency of the living matter itself. In either case, the addition of molecules to those which already existed takes place, not at the surface of the living mass, but by interposition between the existing molecules of the latter. If the processes of disintegration and of reconstruction which characterize life balance one another, the size of the mass of living matter remains stationary, while, if the reconstructive process is the more rapid, the living body grows. But the increase of size which constitutes growth is the result of a process of molecular intus-susception, and therefore differs altogether from the process of growth by accretion, which may be observed in crystals and is effected purely by the external addition of new matter so that, in the well-known aphorism of Linnæus, the word "grow," as applied to stones, signifies a totally different process from what is called "growth" in plants and animals.

3. Its tendency to undergo cyclical changes.

In the ordinary course of nature, all living matter proceeds from pre-existing living matter, a portion of the latter being detached and acquiring an independent existence. The new form takes on the characters of that from which it arose; exhibits the same power of propagating itself by means of an offshoot; and, sooner or later, like its predecessor, ceases to live, and is resolved into more highly oxidated compounds of its elements.

Thus an individual living body is not only constantly changing its substance, but its size and form are undergoing continual modifications, the end of which is the death and decay of that individual; the continuation of the kind being secured by the detachment of portions which tend to run through the same cycle of forms as the parent. No forms of matter which are either not living, or have not been derived from living matter, exhibit these three properties, nor any approach to the remarkable phenomena defined under the second and third heads. But in addition to these distinctive characters, living matter has some