What lives in
them is the protoplasm.
In the shape of food the outer world supplies the organism with all the
materials necessary for the building up of the constantly wasting
organic structures; and, in the shape of heat, there comes from the
outer world that other element necessary for structural changes,
development and growth--the element of force. But the task of directing
all the outward materials to the development and maintenance of the
organism--in other words, the task of the director-general of the
organic economy falls to the protoplasm.
Now this wonderful substance, chemically and physically the same in the
highest animal and in the lowest plant, has been all along the puzzle of
the biologist. How is it that in man protoplasm works out human
structure; in fowl, fowl structure, &c. &c., while the protoplasm
itself appears to be everywhere the same? To Professor Yaeger belongs
the great merit of having shown us that the protoplasms of the various
species of plants and animals are not the same; that each of them
contains, moreover, imbedded in its molecules, odorant substances
peculiar to the one species and not to the other.
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