THE JOURNAL OF MICROSCOPY 



AND 



NATURAL SCIENCE: 



the journal of 

 The Postal Microscopical Society. 



OCTOBER, 1885. 



Ibow plante (Brow* 



By H. W. S. Worsley-Benison, F.L.S., ' 



Lecturer on Botany at Westminster Hospital, President of the 

 Highbury Microscopical and Scientific Society. 





e^O 



MONO the characters which separate Living beings — 

 animals and plants — from Inanimate bodies, their 

 manner of growth occupies a foremost position. 

 Inanimate bodies increase by accretw?i — i.e., a 

 mechanical adding of similar particles to the exte- 

 rior, such as takes place in the making of a snow- 

 ball, for instance. 



Living beings universally "grow" by a process 

 known as ifitiissuscepfion — i.e., a deposition of food- 

 particles between the molecules of the organism ; here we have a 

 positive in-taking, with resultant assimilation, nutrition, and all the 

 processes summarised in the word life. It is to this latter method 

 of increase only that the term ^'growth" can be properly applied. 

 In my paper, entitled " What is a Plant ? " * I stated that the 

 most clearly-marked morphological feature of plant-life was the 

 presence of a cell-wall made up of cellulose, and that the most 



* See this Journal, pp. 74 and 154. 

 VOL. IV. o 



