The animal[4] has sometimes been likened to a steam-engine, in which the food is the fuel which enters into combustion with the oxygen taken in through the lungs. It may be worth while to modify and modernize this analogy--always remembering, however, that such an analogy must not be pushed too far. In the ordinary steam-engine the fuel is placed in the fire-box, to which the oxygen of the air gains access; the heat produced by the combustion converts the water in the boiler into steam, which is made to act upon the piston, and thus set the machinery in motion. But there is another kind of engine, now extensively used, which works on a different principle. In the gas-engine the fuel is gaseous, and it can thus be introduced in a state of intimate mixture with the oxygen with which it is to unite in combustion. This is a great advantage. The two can unite rapidly and explosively. In gunpowder the same end is effected by mixing the carbon and sulphur with nitre, which contains the oxygen necessary for their explosive combustion. And this is carried still further in dynamite and gun-cotton, where the elements necessary for explosive combustion are not merely mechanically mixed, but are chemically combined in a highly unstable compound. But in the gas-engine, not only are the fuel and the oxygen thus intimately mixed, but the controlled explosions are caused to act directly on the piston, and not through the intervention of water in a boiler. Whereas, therefore, in the steam-engine the combustion is to some extent external to the working of the machine, in the gas-engine it is to a large extent internal and direct. Now, instead of likening the animal as a whole to a steam-engine, it is more satisfactory to liken each cell to an automatic gas-engine which manufactures its own explosive. During the period of repose which intervenes between periods of activity, its protoplasm is busy in construction, taking from the blood-discs oxygen, and from the blood-fluid carbonaceous and nitrogenous materials, and knitting these together into relatively unstable explosive compounds, which play the part of the mixed air and gas of the gas-engine. A resting muscle may be likened to a complex and well-organized battery of gas-engines. On the stimulus supplied through a nerve-channel a series of co-ordinated explosions takes place: the gas-engines are set to work; the muscular fibres contract; the products of the silent explosions are taken up and hurried away by the blood-stream; and the protoplasm prepares a fresh supply of explosive material. Long before the invention of the gas-engine, long before gun-cotton or dynamite were dreamt of, long before some Chinese or other inventor first mixed the ingredients of gunpowder, organic nature had utilized the principle of controlled explosions in the protoplasmic cell, and thus rendered animal behaviour possible.