RESEARCHES ON PROTOPLASMIC CONTINUITY. 303 



it the certainly not euphonious name bioplasson. To this it 

 may be answered that, although the word protoplasm conveys 

 in some ways an unsatisfactory ideajyet its persistent and wide 

 use, would warrant its being retained, rather than that scientific 

 terminology should be burdened with another new word, when 

 the value of the original word has been perfectly well defined, 

 and has for the biological student a perfectly clear meaning. 



As far as I can judge Dr. Elsberg appears to confuse reticu- 

 late arrangement with reticulate structure, for he uses the 

 same expression, " reticulated living matter " for both. As 

 examples of such reticulated living matter, he gives Zygnema 

 cruciatum; the description of which he quotes from Sachs — 

 only altering the words '' primordial utricle " for parietal 

 sac."^ Other examples are: young cells of Zea mais, 

 Fritillaria imperialis, and Vicia faba; hairs of Tra- 

 descantia virginica, and Cucurbita. All these are of 

 course examples of reticulate arrangement of protoplasm, and 

 have nothing to do with the structure of the protoplasm 

 itself. 



Passing on to where he treats of the analogy between ani- 

 mals and plants, his terminology again becomes somesvhat 

 confused, in his endeavours to carry the analogy too far ; for 

 comparing the fact, that just as the animal cell is limited by 

 its layer of cement substance, so is the plant-cell limited by 

 its layer of cellulose, he proposes to commemorate " Schleiden 

 and his cell doctrine," by making the word cellulose subserve 

 for the limiting membrane of both the animal and the plant- 

 cell. It is quite obvious, however, that this is impossible, for 

 the term cellulose is a name applied to a definite chemical 

 substance with definite properties, and does not necessarily 

 carry with it the idea of a limiting membrane at all. Cement 

 substance, so far as I am aware, does not, for example, give a 

 blue colour with iodine and sulphuric acid, nor furnish gun- 

 cotton when acted upon with nitric acid. 



We now come to the most important part of the paper, where 

 Dr. Elsberg treats of the perforation of the cell wall. 

 ' Sach's 'Text-book of Botany,' 1882, p. 46. 



