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The whole hair consists of a very delicate outer case of wood, closely applied to the inner surface of which is a layer of semifluid matter, full of innumerable granules of extreme minuteness. This semi-fluid lining is protoplasm, which thus constitutes a kind of bag, full of a limpid liquid, and roughly corresponding in form with the interior of the hair which it fills.
"Ha!" exclaimed the Professor, again smiling blandly, "there you have touched what once was, and, to some philosophers it seems, still is, the great difficulty. By some great men it has been held that glacier ice is always in a partially soft, viscid, or semi-fluid condition, somewhat like pitch, so that, although apparently a solid, brittle, and rigid body, it flows sluggishly in reality.
They were, I say, rubbing a filthy black semi-fluid into his hair at the moment when Cludde and I, with our negroes behind, made a sudden irruption into the kitchen. We had our muskets with us, and seizing mine by the barrel, I brought the stock down on the head of the fellow nearest me, and he dropped heavily to the floor.
The hypothesis of evolution supposes that in all this vast progression there would be no breach of continuity, no point at which we could say "This a natural process," and "This is not a natural process;" but that the whole might be compared to that wonderful process of development which may be seen going on every day under our eyes, in virtue of which there arises, out of the semi-fluid, comparatively homogeneous substance which we call an egg, the complicated organization of one of the higher animals.
But the principal portion of the solid materials ejected from volcanic orifices consists of matter which has been extruded from sources far beneath the surface, in highly-heated and fluid or semi-fluid condition. It is to these materials that the name of "lavas" is properly applied.
The most powerful microscopes disclose in this protoplasm a certain definite structure, a very fine, thread-like network spreading from the nucleus throughout the semi-fluid albuminous protoplasm. It is certainly in line with the broad analogies of life, to suppose that in each cell the nucleus with its network is the brain and nervous system of that individual cell.
The difference, it is alleged, was brought about by tidal waves raised by the sun on the semi-fluid spheroid of Mars. Rotatory velocity was thereby destroyed, the Martian day slowly lengthened, and, as a secondary consequence, the period of the inner satellite, become shorter than the augmented day, began progressively to diminish.
Sometimes it is pasty, sometimes semi-fluid, sometimes sticky, following the knife. In colour it is bluish-white, unless dyed. All things considered, I refuse Gopal's butter, and have mine made at home. The process is very simple, and no churn is needed.
The latter has been termed the physical basis of life, and so far as we know every material living thing is composed wholly of protoplasm and of the structures which it has built up. This grayish, viscid, slimy, semi-transparent, semi-fluid substance, similar to the white of an egg, is the most puzzling, the most wonderful material with which science has to deal.
When viewing the spot, I imagined that the injection of a large mass of rock. like the cone of phonolite at Fernando Noronha, in a semi-fluid state, by arching the surface might have caused a wedge-shaped hollow with cracks at the bottom, and that the rain- water percolating to the neighbourhood of the heated mass, would during many succeeding years be driven back in the form of steam.
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