strychnine, and, manifesting themselves in a wholly different manner, the still higher order of properties, including those of isomerism, exhibited by the proteine bodies; all of which we seem bound to ascribe to the respective orders of combination and complication, under which these substances, possessing the same elementary constituents, exist when they display these qualities. In short their properties must be regarded as the result of the respective molecular constitution of each substance.

With still higher states of aggregation, could such be conceived as possible, we should therefore naturally expect still higher forms of activity, still more marked properties. But we have learned that, while we may safely predict higher properties from higher degrees of aggregation, we have no basis whatever upon which to predict the nature of these properties. Not even in the simplest inorganic reagencies can we foretell the result of the union of any two elements. We cannot even say which of the three states of matter, the gaseous, the liquid, or the solid, our new compound will exhibit at our temperatures. The invincible solid, carbon, when joined with oxygen, becomes a gas; the type of gases, hydrogen, when combined with another gas, oxygen, results in a solid at 32° Fahr. Much less can we predict the other more special properties, even of these primary compounds. ¿ fortiori is human prevision inadequate to presage the result of organic combinations. That the re-compounding of the proteine bodies should result in a new form, possessing the quality of spontaneous movement is a priori just as probable as that the addition of a molecule of oxygen should convert the hydrides into alcohols.

one.

This complex stage of aggregation is no longer an hypothetical The molar aggregate resulting from such a recompounding of the albuminoids has been discovered. It exists under diverse conditions and manifests properties fully in keeping with its exalted molecular character. This substance, discovered by Oken in 1809, and by him denominated Urschleim, recognized by Dujardin in 1835, and called sarcode, and thoroughly studied by Mohl in 1846, who named it protoplasm, has now passed unchallenged into the nomenclature of modern organic chemistry under the last mentioned designation.

Protoplasm is a chemical substance, found in considerable abundance in nature, not only within the tissues of organized

beings, but as we might almost say, in a mineral state, wholly disconnected from such beings. There is no more doubt that it is a natural product than there is that ammonia is such a product. Its composition has been ascertained with considerable accuracy, and is found to be substantially the same under whatever form it may occur. According to the highest authorities this substance. contains, approximately, fifty-four parts of carbon, twenty-one parts of oxygen, sixteen parts of nitrogen, seven parts of hydrogen, and two parts of sulphur in one hundred parts. These proportions doubtless vary somewhat, and traces of other ingredients may, perhaps, be occasionally detected, but the above description is sufficient to fix the chemical character of protoplasm. To write its symbolic formula is impossible in the present state of science, but so is it still impossible, to write that of the albuminoids with any reliable accuracy. Their numerous isomeric forms show us that the grouping of the molecules is subject to constant changes. This is doubtless true to a far greater extent of protoplasm. It is a substance whose molecular units are probably compounded of the units of the proteine bodies, which enter bodily into them in the same manner that oxygen and hydrogen enter into water, or, as we suppose ammonia, carbonic acid, and the compound radicals to enter into the more complex organic compounds.

The many conditions under which protoplasm is found to exist on the globe, may for convenience, be divided into two general classes: the free, and the dependent state. It is a matter of fact that it is found in a free state under a number of forms, both in the sea and in fresh water, and such bodies as Haeckel's Protogenes, and Huxley's Bathybius are simply representatives of it in this condition. On the other hand, protoplasm is present in all organisms, whether animal, vegetable, or protist, and of which, though small in relative quantity, it constitutes by far the most important of all their material constituents. To distinguish the wholly independent, amorphous, and spontaneously developed form of protoplasm above described from that which is found in the tissues of organisms and inseparable from them, Professor Haeckel proposes to apply to it the term plasson, or plasson bodies, which, while it should not lead to the notion that there is any essential difference in the matter itself, is convenient to aid in retaining the concep tion, not generally acknowledged, of its purely chemical character.

It is, however, difficult to describe the properties of the plasson bodies without giving rise to the idea of life, since the leading one is that of spontaneous mobility, or motility, as it has been technically called. Anything that moves is naturally supposed to be alive, and if this were a test of life, all forms of protoplasm would be living things. And, indeed, there would be really no objection to this view, provided the idea of life could be rigidly confined to this and a few other simple phenomena. But the tendency is always strong to couple with the notion of life that of organization, and few can be brought to recognize either that life can be the product of chemical organization, or that it can precede morphological organization. We are apt to associate with the conception of life, that of nerves, muscles, joints, limbs, stomach, and even sense organs. From the plasson bodies all these are as completely wanting as from a lump of gypsum. The spontaneous movements and all the transformations through which these substances pass, only constitute the mode in which their chemical activities manifest themselves. These activities belong to them in the same sense that sweetness belongs to sugar or astringency to alum. In fact, the primary distinction between these most complex of all known bodies, and the less complex ones seems to be, that while in the latter all their activities are molecular, in the former they are to a certain extent molar, and carry with them the whole or a portion of the substances themselves.

The plasson bodies have recently been made to constitute a special field of scientific research, and as much by accident as otherwise, it has been occupied by the biologists instead of by the chemists. These, like judges on the bench, have constantly ruled in favor of their own jurisdiction, and it is in this way that these substances have come to be regarded as forms of life, although their biographers have from the first insisted that they are not organized beings. Perhaps this bit of history is not unfortunate, since it teaches us to disconnect the ideas of life and organization in the biological sense, and thereby directs our thoughts towards the most profound truth, both of biology and of chemistry, which is that life is the result of the aggregation of matter. A plasson body performs all the essential functions of a living organism. It is capable of motion, nutrition and propagation. To these Professor Haeckel adds sensation, for how can the other functions be conceived of without the aid of this one? But we might almost

as well ask, how can a crystal grow without sensation. Nor has that great naturalist failed to perceive these extreme consequences of this extension of the biological jurisdiction, for he seeks to escape them only by pushing it still farther, and proclaiming the animation of all material atoms, even of the lowest orders-die Atom-Seele. It seems far simpler, as well as more correct, to recognize in protoplasm a true chemical substance, but one whose properties constitute the fundamental element of life.

Such a conclusion is no longer the bold speculation that it 'would have been pronounced a few years ago, and this paper could not be more fittingly concluded than with the words of Professor O. C. Marsh, uttered in 1877, that "if we are permitted to continue in imagination the rapidly converging lines of research pursued to-day, they seem to meet at the point where organic and inorganic nature become one. That this point will yet be reached, I cannot doubt."

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THE REPTILES OF THE AMERICAN EOCENE.

BY E. D. COPE.

RE

EMAINS of Batrachia are rare in North American formations later than the Permian. There are two or three species of Stegocephali known from the Trias, above which formation that order is not known to extend in any country. No Batrachians have been obtained from the Jurassic or Cretaceous systems excepting from the top of the latter, in the Laramie. Here occur the salamandrine genera Scapherpeton and Hemitrypus Cope. A single specimen of a frog from the Eocene is mentioned below, and then we miss them until the Loup Fork or Upper Miocene, where Anura and salamanders have been found.

The vertebral column and part of the cranium of a probably incompletely developed tailless Batrachian, were procured by Dr. F. V. Hayden, from the fish shales of the Green River epoch, from near Green River City, Wyoming. They are not sufficiently characteristic to enable me to determine the relation of the species to known forms. It is the oldest of the order Anura yet discovered, the fossil remains of the known extinct species having been derived from the Miocene and later formations of Europe.

The Eocene period, was, of the divisions of the Tertiary, the

most prolific of reptilian life. It is true that the orders of reptiles which characterized the Mesozoic periods no longer existed. The Dinosauria had perished from the land; the Ichthyopterygia, Sauropterygia and Pythonomorpha no longer inhabited the sea, and the Pterosauria had disappeared from the air. What occasioned the remarkable change in reptilian life at the close of the Laramie epoch can only be surmised. During that time the principal land population of North America consisted of Dinosauria, of which there were many species and genera. With the opening of the Puerco Eocene, these huge beasts had entirely disappeared, and a population of small and medium sized Mammalia took their place. The comparative feebleness of the new comers precludes the idea that they assaulted and drove out or killed the Dinosau ria, or that they devoured their food and left them to starve. The only probable hypothesis must suppose that a change of climate ensued, either in a depression of the temperature, or in a desiccation of the atmosphere, which greatly reduced the amount of vegetable life. The large Dinosauria would perish from lack of food, where smaller animals could live. That there was a general desiccation at the beginning of the Eocene period in central North America is indicated by topographical evidence. It was towards the close of the Laramie that the elevation of the Rocky mountains was completed, and their greatest effect in retaining the clouds and rains, must have been apparent. Nevertheless, this effect could not have continued, since the later Eocene and Miocene epochs were rich in forests and animal life.

The Eocene reptiles were not a new creation, nor a new evolution, but a remnant of the types that had coëxisted with the monarchs of life during previous ages. We must except from this statement the serpents, which first appear in numbers at this time, only one cretaceous species having been found by Dr. Sauvage, in France. The crocodiles, tortoises, and lacertilians represent orders already abundant in the Mesozoic fauna. Their decadence in Central North America did not commence until the Miocene period, when the crocodiles and nearly all the tortoises disappeared. From the Loup Fork or Upper Miocene, only a few traces of lizards have been obtained, and snakes were apparently not very numerous. On the eastern coast regions, crocodiles existed, and tortoises were more numerous during the Miocene period; but here also they were less abundant and varied than during the Eocene.