Incumbrance

“ It is more probable that fluid, which we know travels along the tentacles during the act of inflection, is slowly re-attracted into the cells of the convex surface, their tension being thus gradually and continually increased. ”

“ As the head peers out from the membrane, contracted about the body and investing it as in a bag, and the strange creature chews a piece of apple presented by its keeper, the least curious observer must be struck with the peculiarity of the position, and cannot fail to admire the velvety softness and great elasticity of the membrane which forms its wings. ”

“ Purely as a consequence of the chemico-physical nature of the germ, of the properties of the substances included in it on the one hand, and of the implicit structure and configuration of its parts, down to the intrinsic specific undulatory rhythm of its molecules, it must follow that its mass grows exactly as it does, and not otherwise, that it behaves as it does and not otherwise, duplicating itself by division after division, and by intricate changes arranging and rearranging the results of division until the embryo or larva, and finally the complete organism, is formed. ”

“ The rupture of the membrane always takes place in the most recently formed portion, because there the membrane, which thickens gradually, has as yet the least thickness; that is generally the upper portion, so that this offers another analogy to plant life. ”

“ The fluid, which is propagated hence through one class of nerves, returns in an altered state through another, and the nature of that fluid is spiritual, though not immaterial, any more than, as I before remarked, light or electricity are so. ”

“ Aggregation is excited by the most diversified causes,— by the glands being several times touched,—by the pressure of particles of any kind, and as these are supported by the dense secretion, they can hardly press on the glands with the weight of a millionth of a grain, [8] —by the tentacles being cut off close beneath the glands,―by the glands absorbing various fluids or matter dissolved out of certain bodies,―by exosmose,―and by a certain degree of heat. ”

“ To the questions,—What are the forces by which absorption, secretion, and the vital motions, of fluids are produced?—no satisfactory answer has been returned. Yet still some steps have been made, which it may be instructive to point out.
12. In Absorption it would appear that a part of the agency is inorganic; for not only dead membranes, but inorganic substances, absorb fluids, and even absorb them with elective forces, according to the ingredients, of the fluid. A force which is of this kind, and which has been termed Endosmose, has been found to produce very curious effects. ”

“ When coagulation has taken place, then an earthy humour is excreted and is drawn around, and the earthy portion drying up, the membranes are produced both as matter of necessity, and also for a certain purpose. ”

“ For the same reason that there must be an invisible substance that permeates the germ cell and controls its particles and adjusts them, there must be a substance that permeates the aggregate of cells or the whole body, and regulates it. ”

“ What are our bodies but condensations of certain molecules? Mind controls matter. If disembodied intelligences so will it, what is to prevent the hasty condensation of the molecules and the formation of a temporary body in any shape they desire to assume? ”

“ It was the Work of Nature in this Case (and what she was endeavouring to perform) to disburden herself of those disproportionate and offensive Particles, which by their Continuance in the Body would but have occasioned an irregular Motion of the Fluids, and consequently a Discomposure of it’s whole Frame: For the animal Body being nothing else but a Congeries of Canals, filled with different Liquors, it must necessarily suffer very much, and it’s Actions be irregular, if any Heterogeneous Particles become incorporated therewith. ”

“ In many cases, such membranes, while freely permeable to water, are practically impermeable to certain substances in solution, and play the part of sieves in directing and controlling the diffusion. In the case of skin the phenomena are complicated by the fact that the skin combines chemically with many substances in solution, and thus we do not always know what part to assign to chemical combination and what to the osmotic phenomena. ”

“ Being filled with a dense fluid, excreted by the glandular organs, the creature, when alarmed or wishing to descend, withdrew itself within the outer chamber, whereby the contraction of the tube forced the fluid from the heart into the siphuncle, and increasing the gravity enabled it to descend to the bottom. ”

“ Diffusion not only sets up currents in the water and in the solutes, but it also determines movements in any particles that may be in suspension, such as blood corpuscles, particles of Indian ink, and the like. ”

“ From a vesicle floating invisible to the unaided human sense in its womb of fluid, is produced a plant possessing strange powers, or an animal gifted with volition. The idea, that two kinds of polarity—light on one side, and gravitation on the other—produce the two peculiar developments of roots and branches, can only be regarded as one of those fanciful analogies which prove more imagination than philosophy. ”

“ He points out how organic bodies are remarkable for their powers of imbibition, and he seeks to show that the cell is the form under which a body capable of imbibition must necessarily crystallise, and that the organism is an aggregate of such imbibition-crystals. ”

“ The power of movement which various plants possess, when irritated, has been attributed by high authorities to the rapid passage of fluid out of certain cells, which, from their previous state of tension, immediately contract.* Whether or not this is the primary cause of such movements, fluid must pass out of closed cells when they contract or are pressed together in one direction, unless they at the same time expand in some other direction. ”

“ Hundreds of bubbles, each full to bursting of air, press each other in every direction, and constitute a more or less conical and coherent mass of bubbles. It is here that the important point is to be noticed—
Growth is possible only when the cells are in a state of tension. ”

“ I have particularized even more than I intended, Rob. Let me say now, only that the pellets in this little vial contain a chemical which acts upon the human organism in the way I have pictured. It alters the fundamental vibration upon which this substance—these bones, this flesh we call a body—this substance of my being, is built. ”

“ But it does not follow from these observations that the cells on the convex side become filled with more fluid during the act of inflection than they contained before; for fluid may all the time be passing into the disc or into the glands which then secrete freely.
The bending of the tentacles, when leaves are immersed in a dense fluid, and their subsequent re-expansion in a less dense fluid, show that the passage of fluid from or into the cells can cause movements like the natural ones. ”

“ In the mobile, homogeneous body of the amœba, no special means of communication are required. Simple diffusion is sufficient to make the material gained by one part common to the whole mass, and the native protoplasm is physiologically continuous, so that an explosion set up at any one point is immediately propagated throughout the whole irritable substance. ”

“ Of such suspensions animal and vegetable bodies are largely made up, protoplasm being a sort of microscopic emulsion, the physiological action of which seems to be bound up with chemical, thermal, electric and osmotic changes between its semi-permeable membranes and surfaces of discontinuity and the various surface tensions and surface energies derived from the free energy of chemical or electric change. ”

“ So far then, as growth goes on, unaffected by pressure or other external force, the fluidity of protoplasm, its mobility internal and external, and the manner in which particles move with comparative freedom from place to place within, all manifestly tend to the production of swelling, rounded surfaces, and to their great predominance over plane surfaces in the contour of the organism. ”

“ Whether those which have been termed Imponderable Fluids,—the supposed fluids which produce the phenomena of Light, Heat, Electricity, Galvanism, Magnetism,—really exist or no, is a question, not merely of the Laws, but of the Causes of Phenomena. ”

“ This refracts the light a little more than it would be refracted by a membrane in which no such swelling existed, and not only so, but, in combination with the humors, it corrects the errors of dispersion and makes the image somewhat more colorless. All the young animals that have this swelled membrane see more distinctly than their parents or brethren. ”

“ Again, to the allegation that the vital activity of every germ whence an organism arises, is obviously antecedent to the development of its structures, there is the answer that such germ is not absolutely structureless. ”

“ For the equi­lib­rium or tendency to equi­lib­rium of fluid pressure in all parts of its interior while the process of imbibition is going on, the constant rearrangement of its fluid mass, the contrast in short with the crystalline method of growth where each particle comes to rest to move (relatively to the whole) no more, lead the mass of jelly to swell up, very much as a bladder into which we blow air, and so, by a graded and harmonious distribution of forces, to assume everywhere a rounded and more or less bubble-like external form268. ”

“ The laws of nature, however, frequently reveal themselves best in the infinitely little; and I have made my first observations toward a new study in watching the filiform currents produced during the osmotic interchange of two liquids through the pores of a membrane. ”

“ If we will be consistent, we are driven to the conclusion that the apparent simplicity of the germ is real, that the germ contains no gemmules, or determinants or other representative particles; that development is truly epigenetic, a natural series of events that succeed one another according to physicochemical and physiological laws ”

“ Again, let us suppose that the etherial fluid enters the substance of any body capable of being dilated to a great degree, it is equally plain that the action of the fluid must for some time be directed only upon the internal parts, and consequently will be imperceptible on the outside. ”

“ They may be distinguished from those fluids, which are the consequence of deficient absorption, by their not possessing the saline acrimony, which those fluids possess; which inflames the skin or other membranes on which they fall ”

“ II. Water in a quantity greater than usual diminishes the action of the system not only by diluting our fluids, and thence lessening their stimulus, but by lubricating the solids; for not only the parts of our solids have their sliding over each other facilitated by the interposition of aqueous particles ”

“ When the bubbles are large, and when they follow each other rapidly, a continual effervescence is maintained upon the surface of the water. But if the size of the bubbles be reduced, or if the solvent capacity of the liquid be increased, the surface will become almost, if not quite, perfectly tranquil. ”

“ The fan-like expansions are formed of radiating filaments, also very brilliant in hue, which are the breathing organs, separating oxygen from the currents of water which play along their ciliated surfaces. ”

“ Pipette 25 c.c. water sample into flask 6, and 50 c.c. water sample into flask 7.
7. Incubate the two flasks aerobically at 42°C.
8. After twenty-four hours incubation note in each culture:
a. The presence or absence of visible growth.
b. The reaction of the medium as indicated by the colour change, if any, the litmus has undergone.
c. The presence or absence of gas formation, as indicated by a froth on the surface of the medium, and the collection of gas in the inner "gas" tube. [Pg 429]
9. Replace those tubes which show no signs of growth in the incubator. ”

“ The first visible sign of the organic structure of the human form is discovered as it takes shape upon the exterior wall of the blastodermic membrane, known as the embryonic spot, and known also as the primitive trace or furrow. ”

“ The living matter, flowing now this way now that, lays down the walls of its tubes as it flows, and by and by, here and there, a tube, instead of working into the paste, grows upwards into the air and swells at the tip into a colourless ball in which a number of minute seed-like bodies called spores are formed. ”

“ A fertilised germ appears here, as amongst higher organisms, to be the point of departure; and that constant formation of new tissue implied in the production of a great number of individuals by fission, seems gradually to exhaust the germinal capacity in the same way that the constant formation of new tissue, during the development of a single mammal, exhausts it. ”

“ The extension of the old vessels seems rather a consequence than a cause of the germination, or pullulation, of these new ones; for the old vessels may be enlarged, and excited with unusual energy, without any production of new ones, as in the blush of shame or of anger. ”

“ An increased absorption is produced by an increased susceptibility of the ‘absorbent orifices.’ And thus, in this view, each organic power may be contemplated either as sensibility or as contractility, and may be supposed to be rendered more intense by magnifying either of these its aspects; although, in fact, neither can be conceived to be increased without an exactly commensurate increase of the other. ”

“ In all which cases there is a general inaction of the whole system, and as these membranes about the head have been more exposed to the variations of heat and cold of the atmosphere, they are more liable to become affected so far as to produce sensation, than other membranes; which are usually covered either with clothes, or with muscles, as mentioned in Sect. ”