THe Microscope. 359 
answer is: there exist none throughout the whole cornea of 
either man or lower animal. The so-called “cells” of the cornea 
are nothing but continuous protoplasmic tracts with thickenings 
at the points of intersection, where the nuclei are embedded. 
Where does one cell end and the other begin? There is no end 
and no beginning to the protoplasmic tracts, since they are con- 
tinuous by both broad and narrow offshoots. 
I have proved that this very same structure is met with in all 
tissues of the animal body, nowhere being found as isolated or 
individual cells. What, some forty years ago, was considered to 
be a mere variety of cells by Rud. Virchow and termed by him 
“branching or stellate cells,” so beautifully displayed in the 
mucoid or myxomatous tissues of the umbilical cord, has been 
shown by myself, in 1875, to hold good for all types of the con- 
nective tissues, 7. e. the myxomatous as well as the fibrous, the 
cartilaginous and the osseous. Any one convinced of this fact 
may eventually condense the new views by saying, as really has 
been said by some histologists: All the tissue cells of the body are 
interconnected, Still this verbiage will do no justice to the facts, 
as I will demonstrate presently. 
“The cells are the seats of life; the inter-cellular or basis-sub- 
stance is inert and lifeless.” This is another teaching of the cell- 
theory. Look at the gold-stained cornea of the, cat such as I 
have depicted, and you will know better, The basis-substance 
is pervaded by a reticulum the same as is the protoplasm, the 
only difference being that in the former it is much more delicate 
than in the latter. 
The reticulum I have proved, in 1863, to be the living or con- 
tractile matter proper. I have seen it in motion, in alternate 
contraction and extension in the creeping Amceba, and in a large 
number of isolated living protoplasmic bodies, such as, for in- 
stance, the colorless blood corpuscles and the pus corpuscles. I 
have observed the same phenomenon in slabs of hyaline carti- 
lage kept alive under the microscope; in the gray substance of 
the brain of a recently killed rabbit, and in the cornea corpus- 
cles of the frog, under the same conditions. In fact, what we 
call life, is exhibited by the microscope in the form of move- 
ments of the contractile matter. This, during life, is not any- 
where, nor for a single moment at absolute rest throughout the 
whole body. Since the same formation is found in the basis- 
