286 A NOTE ON ADSOKPTION [ch. 



unexplained way with the mechanism of cihary movement. 

 Meves looked upon the chondriosomes as the actual carriers or 

 transmitters of heredity*. Altmann invented a new aphorism, 

 Omne granulum e granulo, as a refinement of Virchow's omnis 

 cellula e cellula ; and many other histologists, more or less in accord, 

 accepted the chondriosomes as important entities, sui generis, 

 intermediate in grade between the cell itself and its ultimate 

 molecular components. The extreme cytologists of the Munich 

 school, Popoff, Goldachmidt and others, following Kichard Hertwig, 

 declaring these structures to be identical with "chromidia" (under 

 which name Hertwig ranked all extra-nuclear chromatin), would 

 assign them complex functions in maintaining the balance between, 

 nuclear and cytoplasmic material ; and the " chromidial hypo- 

 thesis," as every reader of recent cytological literature knows, has 

 become a very abstruse and complicated thing f. With the help 

 of the " binuclearity hypothesis'' of Schaudinn and his school, it 

 has given us the chromidial net, the chromidial apparatus, the 

 trophochromidia, idiochromidia, gametochroniidia, the protogono- 

 plasm, and many other novel and original conceptions. The 

 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 ; while, from the physical 

 point of view we are tempted to see but little mystery in the 

 whole phenomenon, and to ascribe it, in all probability a'nd in 

 general terms, to the gathering or "clumping" together, under 

 surface tension, of various constituents of the heterogeneous cell- 

 content, and to the drawing out of these little clumps along the 

 axis of the cell towards one or other of its extremities, in relation 

 to osmotic currents, as these in turn are set up in direct relation 



* The question whether chromosomes, chondriosomes or chromidia be the true 

 vehicles or transmitters of " heredity " is not without its analogy to the older problem 

 of whether the pineal gland or the pituitary body were the actual seat and domicile 

 of the soul. 



f Of. C. C. Dobell, Chromidia and the Binuclearity Hypotheses ; a review and 

 a criticism, Q.J. M.S. una, 279-326, 1909; Prenant, A., Les Mitochondries et 

 I'Ergastoplasme, Journ. de VAnat. et de la Physiol. XLVi, pp. 217-285, 1910 (both 

 with copious bibUography). 



