PLANT-CELLS AND THEIR CONTENTS. 299 



" No numbers have counted my tallies, 

 No tribes my house can fill ; 

 I sit by the shining fount of Life, 

 And pour the deluge still." 



But there are some other plants whose cells exhibit the phenomenon of 

 living, moving protoplasm so much better than nettle-hairs or pump- 

 kin-hairs, that I can not forbear presenting, in concluding the present 

 article, the cells of one more plant. The plant we now select is a very- 

 common one in most parts of our country, but on account of its simple 

 and retired habits of life is little known save to the botanist and 

 microscopist. An aquatic plant it is, finding a home in slow-running 

 streams, or shallow ponds whose sandy bottoms reflect the warm rays 

 of the summer sun. Totally immersed in water, however, and so far 

 independent of rains, our plant knows little distinction of spring and 

 summer, and grows on vigorously until the frosts of fall are heavy 

 enough to> seal everything under a covering of ice. If during this long, 

 growing season we collect a sprig of Chara (for such is the name of the 

 plant), we shall find it made up of something like a stem bearing whorls 

 of leaves, or at least of what may pass for leaves. Let us now take 

 one of the newest and smallest of these leaves and place it under our 

 lens. A series of cells, you say. But through the thin wall of any 

 cell appears again a flowing stream. Not the pale, delicate thread of 

 silver we saw feeling its way around the cell-wall of the pumpkin-hair 

 or tomato-hair, but a very river it seems now as it rushes on, wave after 

 wave, up from the depths below across the field of vision and down 

 again, over and over, or round and round, in ceaseless rotation (Fig. 17). 



Fig. 17 Terminal Cell from a Frond of Chara (slightly magnified). 



Now the current catches in its course this little particle, now that, 

 hurling each along, now up, now down, now over, now under, without 

 weariness, without hindrance, hour after hour, before us. 



And now, as the stream goes on so grandly, think, for a moment, 

 what it is at which we gaze. "We call it protoplasm, but it is the cur- 

 rent of life, the " physical basis of life " the common bond which 

 binds in one the whole kingdom of organic things. Think, too, of the 

 antiquity of that stream, its lineage. The brook that " goes on for 

 ever " is as nothing to it, for here the stream has come flowing down 

 through ages which are to us as eternity, ever since life began on 

 earth. The mountains have been hoary with years, and have disap- 

 peared beneath the level of the all-producing sea, but this stream is 

 older than they. Continents have grown old, worn out, and been re- 



