THE CELL AND ITS CONTENTS ig 
in a tissue, each pressing on the other, they tend to form 
cubes, or similar shapes, and such cells you can see with 
the naked eye in the pith of the elder, or in the fruit 
of the snowberry. Others, again, grow long and thin, 
and fit into each other like the fingers of your hands, 
if you put the nails of each down to the roots of the 
fingers of the other, and each type has its separate work 
to do. The size may vary in just the same fashion. 
A very ordinary-sized cell would require 300 of its 
brethren in a line to spread over an inch, but some 
can be seen with the naked eye. Others, such as the 
hairs on the outside of the cotton-seed, may grow to an 
inch or two, and some of the seaweeds or alge, where 
the whole plant is only one cell, may grow to a good deal 
more. 
Let us, however, take a young cell, which has not yet 
taken any special shape, and under the microscope see 
what we can make of it. We find a firm membrane, and 
inside it a jelly-like substance. That is all we should be 
certain to find; but if the cell were from one of the 
higher plants, we should also 
notice that the jelly seemed to 
be a little thicker in one part 
than in the rest. 
This outside cover, membrane, 
or cell-wall, is composed of just 
the same substances, and in the 
same quantities, as starch and 
sugar, although it does not look 
like either, and the atoms of Cell divisions in the outer skin of the 
carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen growing stem of Vicia Faba, x 300. 
At a the division has just taken 
that go to make it up must be place, the nucleus & still adheres 
: : : to the new wall. At 0 it has re- 
in some way differently arranged. treated to the older wall. 
