Protoplasm Sentence Examples

Embedded in the protoplasm are a number of starch grains.

In some species (Ascaris decipiens) the giant cell is replaced by an irregular mass of protoplasm containing a number of small nuclei.

The material and the energy go together, the decomposition of the one in the cell setting free the other, which is used at once in the vital processes of the cell, being in fact largely employed in constructing protoplasm or storing various products.

Such a plasmodium bears, on its periphery, groups of rounded projections of protoplasm termed end-organs.

The end wall is usually very thin, and the protoplasm on artificial contraction commonly sticks to it just as in a sieve-tube, though no perforation of the wall has been found.

The cells in which the fungoid organism is vigorously flourishing are exceedingly active, showing large size, brilliant nuclei, protoplasm and vacuole, all of which give signs of iptense metabolic activity.

In many cases the digestion of reserve food materials is effected by the direct action of the protoplasm, without the intervention of enzymes.

There is no direct connection between the two, the oxygen is absorbed almost immediately by the protoplasm, and appears to enter into some kind of chemical union with it.

The protoplasm is in a condition of instability and is continually breaking down to a certain extent, giving rise to various substances of different degrees of complexity, some of which are again built up by it into its own substances, and others, more simple in composition, are given off.

The assimilation of complex foods consequently may be regarded as supplying the protoplasm with a potential store of energy, as well as building tip its substance.

Indeed, the construction of protoplasm itself indicates the same thing.

It has been suggested by several botanists, with considerable plausibility, that the ultra-violet or chemical rays can be absorbed and utilized by the protoplasm without the intervention of any pigment such as chlorophyll.

Even their oxidation, however, is effected by the protoplasm acting as an oxygen carrier.

The growth or increase of the protoplasm at the expense of the nutritive matter for a time keeps pace with the increased size of the cell, but by and by it becomes vacuolated as more and more water is attracted into the interior.

Although the action of zymase may be regarded as mechanical, the enzyme cannot be produced by any other than living protoplasm.

The wall between them is perforated, giving passage to coarse strands of protoplasm.

The common wall separating the pits of the two adjoining cells is pierced by strands of protoplasm.

These cells are not living in the adult state, though they sometimes contain the disorganized remains of protoplasm.

The raw materials from which the food is constructed are absorbed from the exterior in solution in water, and the latter is the medium through which the gaseous constituents necessary for life reach the protoplasm.

But it is certain that it can only be present in a cell in very small amount at any moment, for an extremely dilute solution acts as a poison to protoplasm.

As this is not the incorporation of either into the living sobstance, but is only its manufacture into the complex substances which we find in the plant, it seems preferable to limit the term assimilation to the processes by which foods are actually taken into the protoplasm.

The growth of the protoplasm, though considerable, is therefore not commensurate with the increase in the size of the cell.

Growth is small, and consists mainly in an increase of the quantity of protoplasm, for the cells divide again as soon as they have reached a certain size.

The cells of the tip at any given moment may be sensitive, but in a few days the power of receiving the stimulus has passed to other and younger cells which then constitute the tip. The power of appreciating the environment is therefore to be associated with the protoplasm only at a particular stage of its development and is transitory in its character.

The protoplasm is sensitive to particular influences, perhaps of vibraticn, or of contact or of chemical action.

It has been shown that if the organ containing them is shaken for some time, so that the contact between them and the protoplasm of the cells is emphasized, the stimulus becomes more efficient in producing movement.

The peculiarity of the protoplasm in almost every cell is that it is especially active in the regulation of its permeability by water.

This regulation of turgor is as characteristic of vegetable protoplasm as contraction is of muscle.

It reminds us of a similar property of animal protoplasm which finds its expression in the rhythmic beat of the heart and other phenomena.

The now well-known fact that small doses of poisonous substances may act as stimuli to living protoplasm, and that respiratory activity and growth may be accelerated by chloroform, ether and even powerful mineral poisons, such as mercuric chloride, in minimal doses, offers some explanation of these phenomena of hypertrophy, wound fever, and other responses to the presence of irritating agents.

If the attack of a parasite is met by the formation of some substance in the protoplasm which is chemo- tactically repulsive to the invader, it may be totally incapable of penetrating the cell, even though equipped with a whole armoury of cytases, diastatic and other enzymes, and poisons which would easily overcome the more passive resistances offered by mere cell-walls and cell-contents of other plants, the protoplasm of which forms bodies chemotactically attractive to the Fungus.

In order that a Fungus may enter a plant, it must be able to overcome not merely the resistance of cell-walls, but that of the living protoplasm; if it cannot do this, it must remain outside as a mere epiphyte, e.g.

The protoplasm of a living cell con.sists of a semifluid granular substance, called the cytoplasm, one or more nuclei, and sometimes centrosomes and plastids.

HaberIandt has shown that in plant cells, when any new formation of membrane is to take place in a given spot, the nucleus is found in its immediate vicinity; and Klebs found that only that portion of the protoplasm of a cell which contains the nucleus is capable of forming a cell-wall; whilst Townsend has further shown that if the non-nucleated mass is connected by strands of protoplasm to the nucleated mass, either of the same cell or of a neighboring cell, it retains the power of forming a cell-membrane.

These layers arc secreted by the protoplasm by the direct apposition of substances on those already in existence; and they may go on increasing in thickness, both by apposition and by the intussusception of particles probably carried in through the protoplasmic fibres, which penetrate the cell-wall as long as the cell lives.

Besides the internal or centripetal growth, some cell-walls are thickened on the outside, such as pollen grains, oospores of Fungi, cells of Peridineae, &c. This centrifugal growth must apparently take place by the activity of protoplasm external to the cell.

These occur on the tips of tendrils and on the tentacles of Drosera; (2) sensitive papillae found on the irritable filaments of certain stamens; and (3) sensitive hairs or bristles on the leaves of Dionaea muscipula and Mimosa pudicaall of which are so constructed that any pressure exerted on them at once reacts on the protoplasm.

The sieve tubes contain a thin lining layer of protoplasm on their walls, but no nuclei, and the cell sap contains albuminous substances which are coagulable by heat.

Just as every crystallizable chemical substance assumes a definite and constant crystalline form which cannot be accounted for otherwise than by regarding it as one of the properties of the substance, so every living organism assumes a characteristic form which is the outcome of the properties of its protoplasm.

This modification is important, because it transfers the formative influence from the plastic substances to the protoplasm, suggesting that, the diverse constituents are produced (whether spontaneously or as the result of stimulation) as secretions by the protoplasm.

Some form their diblastula by emboly, others by epiboly; and in the later history of the further development of the enclosed cells (archenteron) very marked variations occur in closely-allied forms, due to the influence of a greater or less abundance of food-material mixed with the protoplasm of the egg.

The two nuclei are successively divided from the egg nucleus in the usual way, but they frequently become absorbed in the peripheral protoplasm instead of being extruded from the egg-cell altogether.

Fertilization takes place as the egg is laid, the spermatozoa being ejected from the spermatheca of the female and making their way to the protoplasm of the egg through openings (rnicropyles) in its firm envelope.

The segmentation of the fertilized nucleus results in the formation of a number of nuclei which arrange themselves around the periphery of the egg and, the protoplasm surrounding them becoming constricted, a blastoderm or layer of cells, enclosing the central yolk, is formed.

In Polia the connective tissue enclosed in the external muscular layer is eminently vacuolar - all the intermediate stages between such cells in which the vacuole predominates and the nucleus is peripheral and those in which the granular protoplasm still entirely fills them being moreover present.

Finally, it brought the simplest living matter or formless protoplasm before the mental vision as the startingpoint whence, by the operation of necessary mechanical causes, the highest forms have been evolved, and it rendered unavoidable the conclusion that this earliest living material was itself evolved by gradual processes, the result also of the known and recognized laws of physics and chemistry, from material which we should call not living.

Thus Bionomics is treated in such articles as Evolution, Heredity, Variation, Mendelism, Reproduction, Sex, &C.; Zoo-dynamics under Medicine, Surgery, Physiology, Anatomy, Embryology, and allied articles; Plasmology under Cytology, Protoplasm, &C.; and Philosophical Zoology under numerous headings, Evolution, Biology, &C. See also Zoological Distribution, Palaeontology, Ocranography, Microtomy, &C.

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 life.

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.

Recent investigations point to the conclusion that the immediate cause of the arrest of vitality, in the first place, and of its destruction, in the second, is the coagulation of certain substances in the protoplasm, and that the latter contains various coagulable matters, which solidify at different temperatures.

A mass of living protoplasm is simply a molecular machine of great complexity, the total results of the working of which, or its vital phenomena, depend - on the one hand, Life con- of this water is absolutely incompatible with either moister by a ctual or potential life.

It is well known that in the vegetable kingdom the protoplasm of one cell frequently overflows into that of cells adjacent - that there is, as it were, a continuous network of protoplasm (idioplasm of Nageli) prevailing throughout vegetable tissues, rather than an aggregation of isolated units.

Our present day definition of a cell is a minute portion of living organized substance or protoplasm.

Within a quarter of an hour after a quantity of cinnabar has been injected into the blood of the frog nearly every particle will be found engulfed by the protoplasm of the leucocytes of the circulating blood.

If the particle enveloped by the protoplasm be of an organic nature, such as a bacterium, it undergoes digestion, and ultimately becomes destroyed, and accordingly the term " phagocyte " is now in common use to indicate cells having the above properties.

In 1872, Hoppe-Seyler (1825-1895) gave a new beginning to our knowledge of the chemistry of secretion and of excretion; and later students have increased the range of physiological and pathological chemistry by investigations not only into the several stages of albuminoid material and the transitions which all foodstuffs undergo in digestion, but even into the structure of protoplasm itself.

An animal may be defined as a living organism, the protoplasm of which does not secrete a cellulose cell-wall, and which requires for its existence proteid material obtained from the living or dead bodies of existing plants or animals.

Were the geologic record complete he would be able to trace the ancestry of man and of all other animals back to their very beginnings in the' primordial protoplasm.

He supposes that all organisms have developed from the simple cell, and that this has its origin by spontaneous generation, to explain which he propounds the " carbon-theory," that protoplasm comes from inorganic carbonates.

The spores, which may be unior multi-cellular, are either abstricted free from the ends of hyphae (acrogenous), or formed from segments in their course (chlamydospores) or from protoplasm in their interior (endogenous).

It was formerly the custom to include with the Fungi the Schizomycetes or Bacteria, and the Myxomycetes or Mycetozoa; but the peculiar mode of growth and division, the cilia, spores and other peculiarities of the former, and the emission of naked amoeboid masses of protoplasm, which creep and fuse to streaming plasmodia, with special modes of nutrition and spore-formation of the latter, have led to their separation as groups of organisms independent of the true Fungi.

The cells of fungi, in addition to protoplasm, nuclei and sap-vacuoles, like other vegetable cells, contain formed and amorphous bodies of various kinds.

That such enzymes are formed in the protoplasm is evident from the behaviour of hyphae, which have been observed to pierce cell-membranes, the chitinous coats of insects, artificial collodion films and layers of wax, &c. That a fungus can secrete more than one enzyme, according to the materials its hyphae have to attack, has been shown by the extraction of diastase, inulase, trehalase, invertase, maltase, raffinase, malizitase, emulsin, trypsin and lipase from Aspergillus by Bourquelot, and similar events occur in other fungi.

Matruchot has used them for staining the living protoplasm of other fungi by growing the two together.

Whether a spore results from the sexual union of two similar gametes (zygospore) or from the fertilization of an egg-cell by the protoplasm of a male organ (oospore); or is developed asexually as a motile (zoospore) or a quiescent body cut off from a hypha (conidium) or developed along its course (oidium or chlamydospore), or in its protoplasm (endospore), are matters of importance which have their uses in the classification and terminology of spores, though in many respects they are largely of academic interest.

At the time of sporangial formation the protoplasm with numerous nuclei streams into the swollen end of the sporangiophore and there becomes cut off by a cell-wall to form the sporangium.

The protoplasm then becomes cut up by a series of clefts into a number of smaller and smaller pieces which are unicellular in Pilobolus, multicellular in Sporodinia.

The single nucleus divides by three successive divisions to form eight nuclei lying free in the protoplasm of the ascus.

Then by a special method, described first by Harper, a mass of protoplasm is cut out round each nucleus; thus eight uninucleate ascospores are formed by free-cell formation.

In the formation of spores the nucleus of the cell divides, the protoplasm collects round the nuclei to form the spores by free-cell formation; the protoplasm (epiplasm) not used in this process becomes disorganized.

Before its fall the leaf has become dry owing to loss of water and the removal of the protoplasm and food substances to the stem for use next season; the red and yellow colouring matters are products of decomposition of the chlorophyll.

There is close interconnexion between the two aspects of the double activity that in physiological theory constitute the chemical life of protoplasm, between dissimilation and assimilation.

The streaming of the protoplasm, known elsewhere among ChloroIn Hydrodictyaceae, Cladophoraceae, Sphaeropleaceae and Gomontiphyceae, is a conspicuous feature of the cells of Characeae.

The zoospore is usually a pyriform mass of naked protoplasm, the beaked end of which where the cilia arise is devoid of colouring matter.

A reddish-brown body, known as the eyespot, is usually situated near the limits of the hyaline portion, and in the protoplasm contractile vacuoles similar to those of lower animals have been occasionally detected.

The antherozoid is a spirally-coiled thread of protoplasm, furnished at one end with a pair of cilia.

The filaments arising from the carpogonia grow into long thin tubes, which fuse with special cells rich in protoplasm contents; and from these points issue isolated tufts of sporogenous filaments, several of which may form the product of one fertilized female cell.

The carpospores are in all cases bright red naked masses of protoplasm when first discharged.

Other granules, easily mistaken for the " starch " granules, are also found in the cells of Phaeophyceae; these possess a power of movement apart from the protoplasm, and are considered to be vesicles and to contain phloroglucin.

Scattered in the protoplasm are usually one or more deeply-staining granules.

The protoplasm itself may be tinged with colouring matter, bright red, yellow, &c., and may occasionally contain substances other than the deeply-staining granules.

These cilia appear to be attached to the cell-wall, being unaffected by plasmolysis, but Fischer states that they really are derived from the central protoplasm and pass through minute pores in cfl,8 the wall.

In some cases the spore-forming protoplasm gives a blue reaction with iodine solutions.

In the case of these red-purple bacteria the colouring matter is contained in the protoplasm of the cell, but in most chromogenic bacteria it occurs as excreted pigment on and between the cells, or is formed by their action in the medium.

Beyerinck's view that it occurs at the moment peptones are worked up into the protoplasm cannot be regarded as proved, and the same must be said of the suggestion that the phosphorescence is due to the oxidation of phosphoretted hydrogen.

In the first place, the extremely small size and isolation of the vegetative cells place the protoplasmic contents in peculiarly favourable circumstances for action, and we may safely conclude that, weight for weight and molecule for molecule, the protoplasm of bacteria is brought into contact with the environment at far more points and over a far larger surface than is that of higher organisms, whether - as in plants - it is distributed in thin layers round the sap-vacuoles, or - as in animals - is bathed in fluids brought by special mechanisms to irrigate it.

Not only so, the isolation of the cells facilitates the exchange of liquids and gases, the passage in of food materials and out of enzymes and products of metabolism, and thus each unit of protoplasm obtains opportunities of immediate action, the results of which are removed with equal.

In these latter the basic aniline dyes in solution are almost exclusively used, on account of their special affinity for the bacterial protoplasm.

In other cases such changes cannot be detected, and the only evidence of their occurrence may be the associated symptoms. The very important work of Ehrlich on diphtheria toxin shows that in the molecule of toxin there are at least two chief atom groups - one, the " haptophorous," by which the toxin molecule is attached to the cell protoplasm; and the other the " toxophorous," which has a ferment-like action on the living molecule, producing a disturbance which results in the toxic symptoms. On this theory, susceptibility to a toxin will imply both a chemical affinity of certain tissues for the toxin molecule and also sensitiveness to its actions, and, furthermore, non-susceptibility may result from the absence of either of these two properties.

Thus in diphtheria changes in both nerve cells and nerve fibres have been found, and in tetanus minute alterations in the nucleus and protoplasm of nerve cells.

Living protoplasm, or in other words a biogen molecule, is regarded as consisting of a central atom group (Leistungskern), related to which are numerous secondary atom groups or sidechains, with unsatisfied chemical affinities.

It is by means of such side-chains that toxin molecules are attached to the protoplasm, so that the living molecules are brought under the action of the toxophorous groups of the toxins.

Protoplasm, the living material, contains only a few elements, all of which are extremely common and none of which is peculiar to it.

Proteid, which consists of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulphur, is present in all protoplasm, is the most complex of all organic bodies, and, so far, is known only from organic bodies.

A multitude of minor and simpler organic compounds, of which carbohydrates and fats are the best known, occur in different protoplasm in varying forms and proportions, and are much less isolated from the inorganic world.

They may be stages in the elaboration or disintegration of protoplasm, and although they were at one time believed to occur only as products of living matter, are gradually being conquered by the synthetic chemist.

Finally, protoplasm contains various inorganic substances, such as salts and water, the latter giving it its varying degrees of liquid consistency.

The older writers have spoken of protoplasm or the cell as being in a sense "manufactured articles"; in the more modern view such a conception is replaced by the statement that protoplasm and the cell have behind them a long historical architecture.

Both ideas, or both modes of expressing what is fundamentally the same idea, have this in common, that life is not a sum of the qualities of the chemical elements contained in protoplasm, but a function first of the peculiar architecture of the mixture, and then of the high complexity of the compounds contained in the mixture.

Biitschli have shown how a model of protoplasm can be manufactured.

Such a model, properly constructed, that is to say, with the vesicles of the foam microscopic in size, is a marvellous imitation of the appearance of protoplasm, being distinguishable from it only by a greater symmetry.

The nicely balanced conditions of solution produce a state of unstable equilibrium, with the result that internal streaming movements and changes of shape and changes of position in the model simulate closely the corresponding manifestations in real protoplasm.

The model has no power of recuperation; in a comparatively short time equilibrium is restored and the resemblance with protoplasm disappears.

But it suggests a method by which, when the chemistry of protoplasm and proteid is better known, the proper substances which compose protoplasm may be brought together to form a simple kind of protoplasm.

Pfliiger has argued that the analogies between living proteid and the compounds of cyanogen are so numerous that they suggest cyanogen as the startingpoint of protoplasm.

Pfliiger suggests that such compounds arose when the surface of the earth was incandescent, and that in the long process of cooling, compounds of cyanogen and hydrocarbons passed into living protoplasm by such processes of transformation and polymerization as are familiar in the chemical groups in question, and by the acquisition of water and oxygen.

His theory is in consonance with the interpretation of the structure of protoplasm as having behind it a long historical architecture and leads to the obvious conclusion that if protoplasm be constructed artificially it will be by a series of stages and that the product will be simpler than any of the existing animals or plants.

Until greater knowledge of protoplasm and particularly of proteid has been acquired, there is no scientific room for the suggestion that there is a mysterious factor differentiating living matter from other matter and life from other activities.

In the process of fertilization the two male generative nuclei, accompanied by the pollen-tube nucleus and that of the stalk-cell, pass through an open pit at the apex of the pollen-tube into the protoplasm of the ovum.

In certain species of Gnetum described by Karsten the megaspore contains a peripheral layer of protoplasm, in which scattered nuclei represent the female reproductive cells; in Gnetum Gnemon a similar state of things exists in the upper half of the megaspore, while the lower half agrees with the megaspore of Welwitschia in being full of prothallus-tissue, which serves merely as a reservoir of food.

In Gnetum Gnemon, as described by Lotsy, a mature embryo-sac contains in the upper part a large central vacuole and a peripheral layer of protoplasm, including several nuclei, which take the place of the archegonia of Ephedra; the lower part of the embryo-sac, separated from the upper by a constriction, is full of parenchyma.

It must be noted, however, that this disproof relates only to known existing organisms. All these are composed of a definite substance, known as protoplasm, and the modern refutation of abiogenesis applies only to the organic forms in which protoplasm now exists.

It may be that in the progress of science it may yet become possible to construct living protoplasm from non-living material.

The refutation of abiogenesis has no further bearing on this possibility than to make it probable that if protoplasm ultimately be formed in the laboratory, it will be by a series of stages, the earlier steps being the formation of some substance, or substances, now unknown, which are not protoplasm.

The microspores are united by means of hardened protoplasm into one or more masses, while the solitary megaspores have a more or less complicated episporium.

According to Binz and Schultz its power is due to the fact that it is an oxygen-carrier, arsenious acid withdrawing oxygen from the protoplasm to form arsenic acid, which subsequently yields up its oxygen again.

The pigment which gives the characteristic colour to the skin is deposited in the protoplasm of the outer ends of the cells in the form of small granules.

In spiderwort (Tradescantia virginica) the hairs are beautifully coloured, moniliform or necklace-like, and afford good objects for studying rotation of the protoplasm.

Within the pollen-grain is the granular protoplasm with some oily particles, and occasionally starch.

In some cases the substances actually enter into a chemical combination with the protoplasm, which may be temporary or (much less frequently) permanent; in other cases they seem simply to modify or disturb the usual chemical activity of the cells.

Some drugs given in excess are poisons to all forms of protoplasm, but when given in doses much short of the lethal they usually exhibit a distinct tendency to affect specially, and at an early period, certain organs or tissues, and hence result differences in action; others may act only on certain organs, leaving the others practically untouched.

Speaking in the widest sense, every substance has an action on living protoplasm, but for convenience pharmacological substances have come to be limited to those which are used as drugs, or which have a distinct action upon the animal organism.

The ideal method of grouping pharmacological substances would be in reference to their chemical action on living protoplasm, but as yet our knowledge is too scanty for this.

They all have a poisonous action on protoplasm, which makes them useful in medicine as antiseptics, disinfectants, germicides, anti-fermentatives and parasiticides; when locally applied they are more or less irritating, and, when very dilute, astringent.

These all resemble carbolic acid more or less closely, and may be described as general protoplasm poisons.

According to Buchner the fermentative activity of yeast-cell juice is not due to the presence of living yeast cells, or to the action of living yeast protoplasm, but it is caused by a soluble enzyme.

All the peculiarities of structure which we encounter consequently support the view with which we started, that the protoplasm of the plant is the dominant factor in vegetable structure, and that there need be but one subject of physiology, which must embrace the behaviour of protoplasm wherever found.

The fact of such absorption does not render these substances food; they are taken in not as food, but as raw materials to be subjected to the action of this constructive mechanism, and by it to be converted into substances that can nourish protoplasm, both vegetable and animal.

All is nourished alike on materials originally prepared by a mechanism attached to the higher vegetable organism, and capable of being dissociated, in theory at least, from its own special means of nutrition, if by the latter term we understand the appropriation by the protoplasm of the materials so constructed.

This is, however, also the case with the nutrition of animal protoplasm.

The changes involve a continual liberation of energy, which in most cases is caused by the respiration of the protoplasm and the oxidation of the substances it contains.

Eventually the protoplasm usually forms only a lining to the cell wall, and a large vacuole filled with cell sap occupies the centre.

This rhythmic affection of vegetable protoplasm can be observed in very many of its functions.

The response to the action of light in diatropic leaves is, according to Haberlandt, due to the presence of epidermal cells which are shaped like a lens, or with lens-shaped thickenings of the cuticle, through which convergence of the light rays takes place and causes a differential illumination of the lining layer of protoplasm on the basal walls of the epidermal cells, by which the stimulus resulting in the orientation of the leaf is brought about.

In close contact with the segments of the sieve tubes are companion cells which communicate with the sieve tubes by delicate protoplasmic strands; they can be distinguished from ordinary pareochymatous cells by their small size and dense protoplasm.

The alternative, which is here accepted, is that differentiation is essentially the expression of a developmental tendency inherent in the protoplasm of plants.

He found that the development of a gall is due to a temporary modification of the part affected, not, as is generally thought, in consequence of the deposition of an egg by the insect, but of the injection of a poisonous substance which has the effect of stimulating the protoplasm to develop a gall instead of normal structure.

If this be so,it may justifiably be inferred that both normal and abnormal morphological features may be due to the presence of enzymatic substances secreted by the protoplasm that determine the course of development.

There is, in addition, a series of bacteria which decompose sulphureous compounds and utilize the element thus liberated in their protoplasm (see Bacteriology).

In many low organisms, such as the spores of bacteria, the thick, non-conducting wall may preserve the living protoplasm from subjection to external temperatures below freezing point, or above boiling point, but all the evidence goes to show that applications of such cold or heat, if prolonged or arranged so as to penetrate to the living matter, destroy life.

The malignant cells develop and accumulate muscle fibres show the pigment in their protoplasm granules of melanin granules, which are of a light yellow pigment.

Until the discovery of protoplasm, and the series of investigations by which it was established that the cell was a fundamental structure essentially alike in both animals and plants (see Cytology), there was a vague belief that plants, if they could really be regarded as animated creatures, exhibited at the most a lower grade of life.

Living substance (see Protoplasm), as it now exists in all animals and plants, is particulate, consisting of elementary organisms living independently, or grouped in communities, the communities forming the bodies of the higher animals and plants.

There is no reason to regard the mortality of protoplasm and the consequent limited duration of life as more than the necessary consequence of particulate character of living matter (see Longevity).

It is plain that we cannot discuss adequately the origin of life or the possibility of the artificial construction of living matter (see Abiogenesis and Biogenesis) until the chemistry of protoplasm and specially of proteid is more advanced.

The word is applied to various small compartments which build up a compound structure such as a honeycomb, to the minute compartments in a tissue, &c. More particularly the word is used, in electrical science, of the single constituent compartments of a voltaic battery, and in biology of the living units of protoplasm of which plants and animals are composed (see Cytology).

The cell is essentially an individualized mass of protoplasm containing a differentiated protoplasmic body, called a nucleus.

In such cases the characters of the adult tissue clearly depend solely upon the characters of the cell-walls, and it is usual in plant-anatomy to speak of the wall with its enclosed cavity as the cell, and the contained protoplasm or other substances, if present, as cell-contents.

The use of the term to mean the individualized nucleated mass of living protoplasm, which, whether with or without a limiting membrane, primitively forms the proximate histological element of the body of every organism, dates from the second quarter of the i9th century.

The cells concerned, like all secreting organs, have abundant protoplasm with large nuclei, and sometimes, in addition, part of the cell-wall is modified as a filter.

When the sieve-tube has ceased to function and the protoplasm, slime strings, and callose have disappeared, the perforations through which the slime strings passed are left as relatively large holes, easily visible in some cases with low powers of the microscope, piercing the sieve.plate.

They possess a delicate Laticiferous layer of protoplasm, with numerous small nuclei lining Tissue the walls, while the interior of the tube (corresponding with the cell-vacuole) contains a fluid called latex, consisting of an emulsion of fine granules and drops of very various substances suspended in a watery medium in which various other substances (salts, sugars, rubber-producers, tannins, alkaloids and various enzymes) are dissolved.

These intermediate cells, like the ordinary parenchyma, frequently store starch, and the fibres themselves, though usually dead, sometimes retain their protoplasm, and in that case may also be used for starch accumulations.

It was fully recognized by its followers that the dominating influence in the structure and working of the body was the protoplasm, and the division of labor which it exhibited, with the accompanying or resulting differentiation into various tissues, was the special subject of investigation.

They laid great stress on the nitrogenous nature of protoplasm, and noted that it preceded the formation of the cell-membrane.

The study of the differentiation of protoplasm was at that time seldom undertaken, and no particular attention was paid either to fixing it, to enable staining methods to be accurately applied to it, or to studying the action of chemical reagents upon it.

They have emphasized the statements of Von Mohl, Cohn, and other writers alluded to, that the protoplasm is here also the dominant factor of the body, and that all the peculiarities of the cell-wall can only be interpreted in the light of the needs of the living substance.

The study of simple organisms, many of which consist of nothing but a little mass of protoplasm, exhibiting a very rudimentary degree of differentiation, so far as our methods enable us to determine any at all, shows that the duties of existence can be discharged in the absence of any cell-wall.

We come, accordingly, to regard it as practically an exoskeleton, and its functions as distinctly subordinate to those of the protoplasm which it clothes.

What little differentiation can be found to exist in the protoplasm of the simple unicellular organism shows the importance of an adequate water-supply, and indeed, the dependence of life upon it.

The naked cells which have been alluded to live in water, and call therefore for no differentiation in connection with this necessity; but those which are surrounded by a cell-wall always develop within themselves a vacuole or cavity which occupies the greater part of their interior, and the hydrostatic pressure of whose contents keeps tha protoplasm in contact with the membrane, setting up a condition of turgidity.

The need for a constant supply of water is partly based upon the constitution of protoplasm, so far as we know it.

The protoplasm derives its food from substances in solution in the water; the various waste products which are incident to its life are excreted into it, and so removed from the sphere of its activity.

We have the formation of numerous mechanisms which have arisen in connection with the question of food supply, which may not only involve particular cells, but also lead to differentiation in the protoplasm of those cells, as in the development of the chloroplastids of the leaves and other green parts.

All physiology, consequently, must be based upon the identity of the protoplasm of all living beings.

Now, as the materials which plants absorb are carbon dioxide from the air, and various inorganic compounds from the soil, together with water, it is clear that if this view is correct, vegetable protoplasm must be fed in a very different way from animal, and on very different materials.

If we examine the seat of active growth in a young root or twig, we find that the cells in which the organic substance, the protoplasm, of the plant is being formed and increased, are not supplied with carbon dioxide and mineral matter, but with such elaborated material as sugar and proteid substances, or others closely allied to them.

We find them to consist of representatives of the great classes of foodstuffs on which animal protoplasm is nourished, and whose presence renders seeds such valuable material for animal consumptien.

The general vegetable protoplasm has not the capacity of being nourished by inorganic substances which are denied to the living substance of the animal world.

These bodies, known technically as chioroplaIts, are found embedded in the protoplasm of the cells of the mesophyll of foliage leaves, of certain of the cells of some of the leaves of the flower, and of the cortex of the young twigs and petioles.

The working of it is not at all completely understood at present, nor can we say exactly what is the part played by the pigment and what is the rfile of the protoplasm of the plastid.

The formaldehyde at once undergoes a process of condensation oi- polymerization by the protoplasm of the plastid, while the hydrogen peroxide is said to be decomposed into water and free oxygen by another agency in the cell, of the nature of one of the enzymes of which we shall speak later.

It is certain that their protoplasm cannot be nourished by inorganic compounds of nitrogen, any more than that of animals.

It may be, however, that there is no special mechanism, but that this power is a particular differentiation of a physiological kind, existing in all vegetable protoplasm, or in that of certain cells.

The idea of an identity of protoplasm does not involve a denial of special powers developed in it in different situations, and the possession of such a power by the vegetable cell is not more striking than the location of the powers of co-ordination and thought in the protoplasm of cells of the human brain.

As the tube grows down the hair it maintains its own independence, and does not fuse with the contents of the root-hair, whose protoplasm remains quite distinct and separate.

These respiratory processes are associated with the liberation of energy by the protoplasm, energy which it applies to various purposes.

The metabolic changes in the cells, however, concern other decompositions side by side with those which involve the building up of protoplasm from the products of which it feeds.

Respiration, indeed, is the expression of the liberation of the potential energy of the protoplasm itself.

The partial asphyxiation or suffocation stimulates the protoplasm to set up a new and perhaps supplementary series of decompositions, which result in the liberation of energy just as do those of the respiratory process.

This comes in almost all such cases from the decomposition of sugar, which is split up by the protoplasm into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

The protoplasm appears to be able also to bring about thc change without secreting any enzyme.

This is evident from the consideration that the growth of the cells is attended by the growth in surface of the cell wall, and as the latter is a secretion from the protoplasm, such a decomposition cannot readily take place unless oxygen is admitted to it.