VI] OF SOME INTRACELLULAR PHENOMENA 457 



chromidial apparatus, the tropliochromidia, idiochromidia, gameto- 

 chromidia, the protogonoplasm, and many other novel and original 

 conceptions. There is apt to be confusion between important and 

 unimportant things ; and the very names are apt to vary somewhat 

 in significance from one writer to another. 



The outstanding fact, as it seems to me, is that physiological 

 science has been heavily burdened in this matter, with a jargon of 

 names and a thick cloud of hypotheses ; but from the physical point 

 of view we see but little mystery in the whole phenomenon. For, 

 on the one hand, it is likely enough that these various bodies, 

 by vastly extending the intra-cellular surface-area, may serve 

 to increase the physico-chemical activities of the cell; and, on 

 the other hand, we ascribe their very existence, in all probability 

 and in general terms, to the "clumping" together under surface- 

 tension of various constituents .of the heterogeneous cell-contents, 

 and to the drawing out of the little clumps along the axis of the cell 

 towards one extremity or the other, in relation to osmotic currents 

 as these are set up in turn in direct relation to the phenomena of 

 surface-energy and of adsorption*. And all this imphes that the 

 study of these minute structures, even if it taught us nothing else, 

 at least surely and certainly reveals the presence of a definite field 

 of force, and a dynamical polarity within the celll. 



* Traube in particular has maintained that in differences of surface-tension" 

 we have the origin of the active force productive of osmotic currents, and that 

 herein we find an explanation, or an approach to an explanation, of many phenomena 

 which were formerly deemed peculiarly "vital" in their character. "Die Diiferenz 

 der Oberflachenspannungen oder der Oberflachendruck eine Kraft darstellt, welche 

 als treibende Kraft der Osmose, an die Stelle des nicht mit dem Oberflachendruck 

 identischen osmotischen Druckes zu setzen ist, etc." (Oberflachendruck und 

 seine Bedeutung im Organismus, Pfluger's Archiv, cv, p. 559, 1904.) There is, 

 moreover, good reason to believe that physiological "osmosis" is not a general 

 phenomenon common to this or that colloid membrane or dialyser, but depends 

 {int. al.) on a specific affinity between the particular membrane (or the particular 

 material it is moistened with) and the substance dialysed. This statement, made 

 by Kahlenberg in 1906 {Journ. Phys. Cheni^. x, p. 141; also Nature, lxxv, p. 430, 

 1907), has been confirmed (e.g.) by R. Brinkmann and A. von Szent-Gyorgyi 

 in Biochem. Ztschr'. cxxxix, pp. 261-273, 1923. 



t C. E. Walker, in an interesting paper on Artefacts as a guide to the chemistry 

 of the cell, Proc. E.S. (B), cm, pp. 397-403, 1928, tells how he took mixtures of 

 albumen, gelatine and lipins, with droplets of methyl myristate (with or without 

 phosphorus) to act as nuclei; and found on treating with osmic acid that the lipins 

 had separated out and arranged themselves very much as do Golgi bodies and 

 other structural elements in ordinary histological preparations. 



