The living substance of a cell (including cytoplasm and nucleus)

Usage examples of protoplasm.

Shortly after the tentacles have reexpanded, the little masses of protoplasm are all redissolved, and the purple fluid within the cells becomes as homogeneous and transparent as it was at first.

The importance of the nucleus became more and more forcibly impressed upon microscopists, and this body came after a little into such prominence as to hide from view the more familiar protoplasm.

After the protoplasm in a tentacle has been aggregated, its redissolution always begins in the lower part, and slowly travels up the pedicel to the gland, so that the protoplasm last aggregated is first redissolved.

By this time a few rather large, transparent, globular masses appeared within the upper ends of the pedicels, and the protoplasm lining their walls had shrunk a little.

This result is analogous to that which follows from the immersion of leaves in a strong solution of one part of the carbonate to 109, or 146, or even 218 of water, for the leaves are then paralysed and no inflection ensues, though the glands are blackened, and the protoplasm in the cells of the tentacles undergoes strong aggregation.

A similar result followed from an immersion of only 15 minutes in a solution of one part of carbonate of ammonia to 218 of water, and the adjoining cells of the tentacles, on which the papillae were seated, now likewise contained aggregated masses of protoplasm.

That the contents of the cells of the glands, and afterwards those of the pedicels, are affected in a plainly visible manner by the pressure of minute particles, we shall have abundant evidence when we treat of the aggregation of protoplasm.

Altogether, one of these cells with the ever changing central masses, and with the layer of protoplasm flowing round the walls, presents a wonderful scene of vital activity.

The Divisionists are much given to the practice of black magic in general, and they have innumerable formulas of varying efficacy for destroying the Mother Cell, also known as the Protoplasm Daddy, by torturing or killing a captured replica.

It was the simplest thing that had life, and indeed the only thing that had life, for there is no life outside of cells and protoplasm.

While the study of plants and animals was showing scientists that natural forces would explain the origin of more complex types from simpler ones through the law of natural selection, here in this conception of protoplasm was a theory which promised to show how the simplest forms may have been derived from the non-living.

It is not protoplasm, but cell substance, plus cell nucleus, which forms the simplest basis of life.

These simplest life processes are so marvelous and involve the action of such an intricate mass of machinery that we can no longer retain our earlier notion of protoplasm as the physical basis of life.

At all events, at the present time we know of no such simple protoplasm capable of living activities apart from machinery, and the problem of explaining life, even in the simplest form known, remains the problem of explaining a mechanism.

Most students of protoplasm have therefore abandoned all expectation of making even the simplest living thing.