154 Autonomy of Cell-Organs 



This supposition has since been completely confirmed 

 by Went.^^ He showed first, that, contrary to the pre- 

 vailing opinion, vacuoles are present even in the youngest 

 cells of the meristem. These multiply continuously 

 through division, and observation teaches that during 

 cell-division one-half of the vacuoles present goes to one 

 daughter-cell and the other half to the other. Some- 

 times it was possible to observe the constriction and after- 

 wards the transmission of the two sap-vesicles, formed 

 in this way, to the daughter-cells. From the vacuoles 

 of the meristem all the vacuoles of the entire plant can 

 thus be derived. Divisions of these structures are to be 

 found everywhere; formations de novo nowhere. In the 

 same way, in the cryptogams that grow with an apical 

 cell, all the vacuoles originate from the original vesicles 

 present in these cells. 



According to these investigations the vacuoles behave 

 exactly in the same way as the chromatophores, and are 

 just as independent cell-structures as the latter. And 

 through the demonstration of this independence, the pan- 

 meristic conception of cell-division has been definitely 

 proven as correct, in opposition to the former neogenetic 

 one. 



According to later communication by the same author, 

 he succeeded also in observing the formation of vacuoles 

 in some special cases which had not been studied before. 

 Here should be emphasized the formation of these organs 

 in the swarm-spores which, according to a communication 

 by letter from Went, comes about by a division of the 

 sap-vesicle in the mother-cell in such a way that every 



^^Went, F. A. F. C. Die Vermehrung der normalen Vacuolen 

 durch Theilung. Jahrh. IViss. Bot. 19: 295. 1888. 



