168 GILBERT C. BOURNE. 
door is it a room, and if I open the door is it no longer a 
room? The subject might be argued with much ingenuity, 
but the final answer is this—that “room” and “cell” are 
terms which give expressions to certain states of our conscious- 
ness, and for practical purposes they are very useful terms 
indeed. Where distinct states of consciousness are called up, 
of such a nature as to give rise to ideas of particularity, it 
is a mere quibble to argue that the apparent parts are actually 
merged in a whole. A cell is none the less a cell, in the sense 
of a thing distinct in itself, because it is conjunct with its 
fellow cell, than my room is the less a room because it has 
one door opening into an adjoining room and another opening 
into the passage. 
Yet there is something more than a verbal quibble in Mr. 
Sedgwick’s contention. He would have it that in the case of 
mesenchyme it is incorrect to say that it is a number of stel- 
late cells joined to one another by their processes. For him 
the correct description is, ‘fa protoplasmic reticulum with 
nuclei at the nodes.” Does he accept the logical consequences 
of this, and say of the epithelial cells of the Salamander or of 
unstriped muscle fibres that they are protoplasmic reticula 
with nuclei at their nodes? And if so, how does he explain 
the fact that, in the one case and in the other, the elements 
when absolutely isolated by appropriate methods show a re- 
markably constant and characteristic form’? Were they what 
he describes, rupture of the internodes of the reticulum would 
result in amorphous lumps of protoplasm, not in units of 
characteristic form. It is the constancy of the various forms 
of cells which convinces morphologists of their individuality 
as form elements, and all the arguments which Mr. Sedgwick 
or anybody else may choose to bring forward will not convince 
the man who goes into a laboratory, makes a few maceration 
preparations, and studies the results for himself. 
Thus a tissue formed of conjunct cells is made up of many 
and not of one, and as a form concept the cell holds its ground 
and, pace Mr. Sedgwick, it will continue to hold its ground 
against all comers. 
