Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/741



ORE than forty years have now passed away since the French naturalist, Dujardin, drew attention to the fact that the bodies of some of the lowest members of the animal kingdom consist of a structureless, semi-fluid, contractile substance, to which he gave the name of Sarcode. A similar substance occurring in the cells of plants was afterward studied by Hugo von Mohl, and named by him Protoplasm. It remained for Max Schultze to demonstrate that the sarcode of animals and the protoplasm of plants were identical.

The conclusions of Max Schultze have been in all respects confirmed by subsequent research, and it has further been rendered certain that this same protoplasm lies at the base of all the phenomena of life, whether in the animal or the vegetable kingdom. Thus has arisen the most important and significant generalization in the whole domain of biological science.

Within the last few years protoplasm has again been made a subject of special study; unexpected and often startling facts have been brought to light, and a voluminous literature has gathered round this new center of research. I believe, therefore, that I can not do better than call your attention to some of the more important results of these inquiries, and endeavor to give you some knowledge of the properties of protoplasm, and of the part it plays in the two great kingdoms of organic nature.

As has just been said, protoplasm lies at the base of every vital phenomenon. It is, as Huxley has well expressed it, "the physical basis of life." Wherever there is life, from its lowest to its highest