PLANT CELLS AND LIVING MATTER. 87 



Plant Cells and Living Matter. 



By 



liouis Elsberg, m.D., 



of New York. 



To botanists biology owed its first knowledge of ultimate 

 structure and of living matter. The names " cell'' and " pro- 

 toplasm" testify to the epoch-making researches of Schleiden 

 and Von Mohl. And in accumulation and classification of 

 further biological knowledge botanists have taken so prominent 

 a part that even those of us who are interested only in animal 

 morphology have had to keep some track of the labours of 

 Nageli, Pringsheim, De Bary, Hofmeister, Sachs, Prantl, Stras- 

 burger, and many others. It is all the more remarkable, there- 

 fore, that the investigations carried on during the past decade, 

 which have resulted in proving that all the so-called ** cells" 

 constituting animal tissues are interconnected by filaments of 

 living matter emanating from these " cells," seem to have 

 borne no fruit for the study of plants. It was in the hope of 

 being able to repay histological botany for some of the light it 

 has thrown on animal histology that I engaged in the researches, 

 the account of a few of which I am about to detail. 



A small portion of a delicate blade of grass, cut off with a 

 pair of scissors, transferred to a slide together with a drop of 

 dilute glycerine (two parts of pure glycerine and one part of 

 distilled water), was examined with a power of 1200 diam. I 

 had at my disposal for these examinations two excellent immer- 

 sion lenses, made respectively by Tolles, of Boston, and Verick, 

 of Paris. In some parts, in tvichomes, stomata, air-vessels 

 &c., nothing more could be seen with such amplification than 

 with comparatively low powers of the microscope ; the epi- 



