358 H. M. BEHNAIJD. 



From this reserve, and coated with a thin layer of its stored- 

 up material, they radiate outwards in all directions into the 

 surrounding mass of the granular cytoplasm supplied by the 

 food. By this method of arrangement, the radiating net- 

 work, which takes the leading part in all vegetative processes, 

 could always be supplied with the two different kinds of 

 substances on whose chemical unions its " life " depends. 



Returning to our own sphere, the morphological unit in 

 protoplasmic structures is the protomitomic system, while 

 what is ordinarily called the cell is simply a centre of physio- 

 logical activity for this system. The number of centres in all 

 probability varies according to the extent of the system or 

 according to the intensity of its functional activities. 



This brief summary clearly assumes that a protomitomic 

 system underlies all protoplasmic structures. For the present, 

 it is sufficient to show that that assumption is justifiable. 

 The retina is an organ of the body, and it is not at all 

 probable that its fundamental constitution should be different 

 from that of the organism of which it is but a part. Peculiar 

 as the general structure of the organ may be for its special 

 function as a retina, it results from a modification of the same 

 formative tissue from which all the other organs have arisen. 

 Furtlier, the connection with the rest of the organism by 

 means of the optic nerve compels us to believe that the nerve- 

 fibrils which run into the nuclei of the retina, and then on 

 from nucleus to nucleus, must themselves have come from 

 nuclei of the central nervous system. And further, reasoning 

 in this Avay from the central nervous system to other organs, 

 we are forced to conclude that protomitomic sy steins underlie 

 all the organs of the body, and that they also, like the retina, 

 are connected with the protomitomic system of the central 

 nervous system by bundles, often of considerable length, of 

 protomitomic filaments — that is, of primitive nerve-fibrils. If 

 this deduction bo correct, a new light is thrown on the 

 morphology of the nervous system. 



That this universality of the protonn'tomic S3'stem as the 

 essential structui-ul element in protoplasm is not a mere 



