204 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



XV. On some recent Contrihutions to our Knowledge of the 

 Morphology and Physiology of the Cell. By Patrick 

 Geddes, F.E.S.E., Lecturer on Zoology in the School of 

 Medicine, and Demonstrator of Botany in the University 

 of Edinburgh. [Plate III.] 



(Read 1st March 1881, with additions 15th March 1882.) 



After the establishment of the cell theory, and more 

 especially after Max Schultze had shown that the cell was not 

 of necessity definitely walled, but was essentially a naked lump 

 of protoplasm with an embedded nucleus, the attention of 

 histologists was for some years almost withdrawn from the 

 scrutiny of the minute structure of this unit-mass, to be 

 concentrated upon the study of the modes of arrangement 

 and differentiation of these unit-masses into the systems of 

 tissues into which the genius of Bichat had analysed the 

 organism. With the discovery of the remarkable changes 

 which are to be observed in dividing cells, however, a return 

 from the study of the cell-aggregate to that of the cell itself 

 commenced, and this newer movement has been so fruitful 

 and so suggestive that the question of cell structure is again 

 paramount in histology. It is the object of the present paper 

 briefly to summarise and discuss some of the later contri- 

 butions — excepting, however, those relating to the changes 

 which go on during cell-division — partly because the enormous 

 and rapidly increasing literature on this subject is already 

 admirably treated in the well-known works of Plemming, 

 Strasburger, and others, which excellent summaries have been 

 from time to time published in English,* but also because the 

 rapid increase of our knowledge of the wonderful phenomena 

 exhibited by the dividing nucleus has naturally tended to 

 throw into the shade numerous other scarcely less important 

 lines of researcli which may profitably be considered. 



Assuming, then, a knowledge of at least the ultimate 

 result of these researches — the fundamental similarity of the 

 process of cell-division in animal and vegetable cells alike, — 



* Quart. Journ. Micro. Sci., xvi., xviii., xx., etc. ; and .Tourn. Roy. 

 Micro, Soc. Lond., 2Msshn. 



