- sists merely in attracting matter like their own from the
circumambient fluid. To suppose the growth of protoplasm of the same nature, would be to suppose this substance to be spontaneously generated in copious supplies wherever food is in solution. Certainly, it must be granted that protoplasm is but a chemical substance, and that there is no reason why it should not be formed synthetically like any other chemical substance. Indeed, Clifford has clearly shown that we have overwhelming evidence that it is so formed. But to say that such formation is as regular and frequent as the assimilation of food is quite another matter. It is more consonant with the facts of observation to suppose that assimilated protoplasm is formed at the instant of assimilation, under the influence of the protoplasm already present. For each slime in its growth preserves its distinctive characters with wonderful truth, nerve-slime growing nerve-slime and muscle-slime muscle-slime, lion-slime growing lion-slime, and all the varieties of breeds and even individual characters being preserved in the growth. Now it is too much to suppose there are billions of different kinds of protoplasm floating about wherever there is food.
The frequent liquefaction of protoplasm increases its power of assimilating food; so much so, indeed, that it is questionable whether in the solid form it possesses this power.
The life-slime wastes as well as grows; and this too takes place chiefly if not exclusively in its liquid phases.
Closely connected with growth is reproduction; and though in higher forms this is a specialized function, it is universally true that wherever there is protoplasm, there is,
