372 NATURAL SCIENCE. Dec. 



appropriated at the same time, and their management placed in the 

 hands of Governors, who would be, as a matter of course, gentlemen of 

 education, who would take care that the museum was not made the 

 dumping-heap for all sorts of bequests, the indiscriminate acceptance 

 of which makes scientific classification impossible. Certainly, there 

 is a great field for improvement, and the direction of reform suggested 

 has some good, practical features about it." 



Dr. Hertwig on the Cell. 



When the original edition of Oscar Hertwig's treatise on the cell 

 appeared, we reviewed it at considerable length (Natural Science, ii., 

 p. 225). It is unnecessary to devote part of our columns on new 

 books to praise the excellent translation of the work, edited by 

 Dr. H. J. Campbell, and recently issued by Messrs. Swan Sonnen- 

 schein (London, 1895, price 12s.). At the present time, when the 

 cell-theory is a topic of the day, this careful and accurate translation 

 of a work by, perhaps, the leading exponent of the theory is 

 unusually welcome. As Hertwig points out, a whole series of con- 

 ceptions clusters round the term " cell," and although in many 

 respects " the cell-theory is the centre around which the biological 

 research of the present time revolves," it cannot be said that our 

 present conception is final or perfect. Roughly speaking, the chief 

 stages in the series of conceptions are these. Originally, the term cell 

 was applied to the small room-like spaces, provided with firm walls and 

 filled with fluid, to be seen in plants. The wall was the most striking 

 occurrence, and the name arose from this. The continuance of the 

 name, now that the idea is incongruous with it, has led, we think, to an 

 appearance of conflict when no real conflict exists. But we cannot 

 agree with Mr. Bourne's approval of the word "cyte" as a substitute; 

 for the idea "box" retains precisely the error of the word "cell." 

 It is not an enclosed space, but a localised piece of matter that we 

 wish to name. The second term in the series of concepts is due 

 chiefly to Max Schultze; the cell-wall was regarded as an "accident" 

 of the cell. The cell was a small mass of protoplasm endowed with 

 the attributes of life. While this idea ruled, the question arose as to 

 whether or no every cell had a nucleus ; improvements in the method 

 of observation, and extension of actual observations, led to the con- 

 viction that the nucleus was an essential factor of the cell. This 

 gives us the last definition of the concept ; the cell is a little mass of 

 protoplasm, which contains in its interior a specially-formed portion, 

 the nucleus. The problem over which Mr. Sedgwick and others do 

 rage exceedingly, seems to us to be not much more, in essence, than 

 this : round each nucleus there is a mass of protoplasm, in most cases 

 plainly dominated by the nucleus ; are the mass of protoplasm and 

 the included nucleus necessarily bound together as an individual, or 

 may the nucleus move through the protoplasm and acquire a new 

 " sphere of influence " ? 



