Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/77

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HE tem protoplasm, from Gr. πρῶτος, first, and πλύσμα, form, is applied to the supposed original substance from which all living beings are developed, and which is the universal concomitant of every phenomenon of life. All that is comprehended for brevity under the terra life, whether the growth of plants, the flight of birds, or a train of human thought, is thus supposed to be caused by corporeal organs which either themselves consist of protoplasm, or have been developed out of it. Wherever nutrition and propagation, motion and sensation exist, there is as their material basis this substance designated in a general sense as protoplasm. The proof of it is held to be furnished by the protozoans called moners, the whole completely developed body of which consists solely of protoplasm. They are not only the simplest organisms with which we are acquainted, but also the simplest living beings we can conceive of as capable of existing; and though their entire body is but a single, formless, small lump of protoplasm, and (each molecule of it being like the other) without any combination of parts, yet they perform all the functions which in their entirety constitute in the most highly-organized animals and plants what is comprehended in the idea of life, namely, sensation and motion, nutrition and propagation. By examining these moners we shall gain a clear conception of the nature of protoplasm, and understand the important biological questions connected with the theory.

Some moners live in fresh water, and others in the sea. They are as a rule invisible to the naked eye, but some are as large as the head of a pin, and may be distinguished without the aid of a microscope. When completely at rest a moner commonly assumes the shape of a simple sphere. Either the surface of the body is quite smooth, or numerous exceedingly delicate threads radiate from it in all directions. These threads are not permanent and constant organs of the slime-like body, but perishable continuations of it, which alternately appear and disappear, and may vary every moment in number, size, and form. For this reason they are called false feet or pseudopodia. Nevertheless, by means of these pseudopodia the moners perform all the functions of the higher animals, moving them like real feet either to creep, climb, or swim. By means of these sticky threads they adhere to foreign bodies as with arms, and by shortening or elongating them they drag their own bodies after them. Each thread, like the whole body, is capable of being contracted, and every portion of it is as sensitive and excitable as the entire form. When any point on the