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 the proper conditions. And here, it is not only a question of inferior beings; of plants that are propagated by slips; of the hydra which Trembley cut into pieces, each of which generated a complete hydra; of the naïs which C. Bonnet cut up into sections, each of which reconstituted a complete annelid. There is no exception to the rule.

Decentralization of the Vital Principle.—The result is the same in the higher vertebrates, only the experiment is much more difficult. At the Physiological Congress of Turin in 1901, Locke showed the heart of a hare, extracted from the body of the animal, and beating for hours as energetically and as regularly as if it were in its place. He suspended it in the air of a room at the normal temperature, the sole condition being that it was irrigated with a liquid composed of certain constituents. The animal had been dead some time. More recently Kuliabko has shown in the same way the heart of a man still beating, although the man had been dead some eighteen hours. The same experiment is repeated in any physiological laboratory, in a much easier manner, with the heart of a tortoise. This organ, extracted from the body, fitted up with rubber tubes to represent its arteries and veins, and filled with the defibrinated blood of a horse or an ox taken from the slaughter-house, works for hours and days pumping the liquid blood into its rubber aorta, just as if it were pumping it into the living aorta.

But it is unnecessary to multiply examples. Every organ can be made to live for a longer or shorter period even though removed from its natural position; muscles, nerves, glands, and even the brain itself. Each organ, each tissue therefore enjoys an inde