escape the necessity of death. They have not, as Weismann remarks, the real immortality of the gods of mythology, who were invulnerable. On the contrary, they are infinitely vulnerable, fragile, and perishable; myriads die every moment. But their death is not inevitable. They succumb to accidents, never to old age.
Imagine one of these beings placed in a culture medium favourable to the full exercise of its activities, and, moreover, wide enough in its extent to be unaffected by the infinitely small quantities of material which the animal may take from it or expel into it. Suppose, for example, it is an infusorian in an ocean. In this invariable medium the being lives, increases, and grows continually. When it has reached the limits of a size fixed by its specific law, it divides into two parts, which are indistinguishable the one from the other. It leaves one of its halves to colonize in its neighbourhood, and it begins its evolution as before. There is no reason why the fact should not be repeated indefinitely, since nothing is changed, either in the medium or in the animal.
To sum up. The phenomena which take place in the cell of the protozoan do not behave as a cause of check. The medium allows the organism to revictual and to discharge itself in such a way and with such perfection that the animal is always living in a regular régime, and, with the exception of its growth and later on of its division, there is nothing changed in it.
Death a Phenomenon of Adaptation—It appeared in the Course of the Ages.—This immortality belongs in principle to all the protista which are reproduced by simple and equal division. If it be remarked that
