ABSTRACT
Since my communication in the last number of this Journal, “On the Circulation of the Sap in the Leaf-cells of the Anackaris Ahinastrum” I have continued some investigations on non-aquatic plants, with the view of ascertaining the relation or analogy, that the phenomena of their circulatory movements display, towards the subject of my former paper, and to each other respectively.
As these observations were intended to be exclusively confined to thesap-circulation, I have been desirous of recording them in the simplestmanner possible, and have therefore avoided technical expressions ; whatI have termed “the investment of active corpuscles,” has been knownas “protoplasm,” or “cell-mucus.” It may be doubted whether theseterms are strictly applicable, or truly represent that which in realityconsists of a multitude of particles, possessing individual activity anddiffering in size, and probably in chemical constitution, according to localposition and the variety of plant-substance and tissue with which theyare ultimately destined to combine, such as cellulose, and the loose contentsof the cell, as chlorophyll- and staich-granules, the latter being mostevidently formed by the successive deposit of external layers upon acentral nucleus.
I may also remark, that it was formerly supposed, and some even nowretain the same opinion, that the “circulation,” “rotation,“” gyration,“or” cyclosis, “in the vegetable cell, both in its early development, orgrowing stages, was in some way connected with a central nucleus, alsokept in rotation, and termed the” cytoblast.” I consider this suppositionto be entirely fabulous, for whenever I have occasionally observed such anucleus, it has either been formed by an accidental conglomeration of someof the cell contents, or by morbid conditions.
A fact curiously in accord with what has been observed by Ktilliker,with respect to the action of the jsame re-agents upon the spermatic filamentsof animals.—Vide’ Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science,’vol. iii., p. 293.—[EDS.]
