Chapter XX — 215 — Summary and Conclusions 



ules which render it entirely luminous. It takes on the aspect of 

 a lump of snow and is then coagulated. 



Since the work of Mayer and Schaeffer, it has been believed 

 that the cytoplasm is in the state of a fluid hydrogel. Nevertheless, 

 the cytoplasm differs essentially from gels by the fact that it is not 

 miscible with water. Because of this special characteristic, BoT- 

 TAZZI had given to the colloidal system existing only in plant cells, 

 the name gliode. It seems to us at the present time, in conse- 

 quence of the research of BuNGENBERG DE JONG, that it can be 

 likened to a coacervate system. 



Excluding the bacteria and Cyanophyceae (inferior organisms 

 with a very primitive structure), investigations of plant cells since 

 1910 have proved that each cell, and this is also true for animals, 

 can be considered as containing permanently in suspension in its 

 homogeneous and transparent cytoplasm, small elements present- 

 ing well defined morphological and histochemical characteristics, 

 namely, the chondrio somes. These appear as cellular entities. The 

 entire group of them in a cell constitutes the choyidriome. To- 

 gether with these elements, there are found in the cytoplasm of 

 green plants other cellular entities, presenting during functional 

 inactivity the same forms and the same histochemical character- 

 istics as the chondriosomes, therefore closely related to them, and 

 indistinguishable from them except for an ability to manufacture 

 chlorophyll and starch. These are the plastids which can be con- 

 sidered as a variety of chondriosome peculiar to chlorophyll-con- 

 taining plants and existing because of the photosynthetic processes 

 which characterize green plants. 



Finally, every cell, even those of bacteria and the Cyanophy- 

 ceae, contains a vacuolar system or vacuome, and in addition a 

 more or less large quantity of lipide granules ("microsomes" of 

 other authors). 



The chondriome:- The chondriome is composed of elements 

 showing by their shapes as well as by their dimensions, a great 

 resemblance to bacteria. These are elements in the form of gran- 

 ules (mitochondria), of short rods, or of filaments which may be 

 grouped or branched (chondrioconts, 0.5/a-I/i, thick) . They are 

 capable of dividing and of passing from one to the other of these 

 forms, either by elongations of the mitochondria or by fragmenta- 

 tion of the chondrioconts. The mitochondrial form is generally 

 the one which characterizes sexual cells and the early stages of 

 embryonic cells. The chondriocontal form is generally the one 

 which is the most wide-spread throughout differentiated cells. It 

 seems, as Meves states, that the chondriosomes must be considered 

 as permanent entities of the cell, incapable of arising de novo and 

 capable of being transmitted from cell to cell by division. This 

 continuity of chondriosomes is rendered very probable by the fact 

 that during sporulation of the fungi (Ascomycetes, Saprolegnia- 

 ceae, Allomyces, etc.) these elements show division figures and are 

 distributed among the spores. This continuity is, however, im- 



