1888.] MICKOSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 211 



If it is thus a secondary body, it does not seem that we can consider it as in 

 higher forms embodying the entire i-egenerative energy.* 



While tlie study of the higher Protozoa seems to prove that the nucleus 

 must be present in order to reproduction, certain facts from the lower Protozoa 

 seem to require still further revision and study before we can regard the case 

 from the Protozoa as settled. Thus, Graber (1SS3) finds that in Actinophrys, 

 one of the heliozoa, the body may break up into parts without the concurrence 

 of visible changes in the nucleus. The enucleate individuals behave as the 

 parent did, but it was not learned whether they can generate a nucleus. They 

 may coalesce with each other or with the nucleate individual. Actinosphae- 

 rium, a multinucleate form, may break up and each part carry away a nucleus 

 and the parts may reunite, the nuclei remaining distinct. Here, then, cyto- 

 plasm appears to have all powers except the power of reproduction. 



It is further noticeable, as an indisputable fact, that there is no form-corre- 

 lation between nucleus and cytoplasm. The nucleus, except during division, 

 is usually spherical, and after dividing it returns to its spherical or oval form. 

 It would seem that its influence should thus be equal in all directions, and 

 enforce a similar form upon the cell. How different the cell ! It preserves 

 the spherical form, but very rarely. Variation in form is its most constant 

 character. ^ While the nucleus goes on repeating its form with never varying 

 regularity, the cell marches straight on from form to form, never returning, 

 never repeating, differentiating, developing, and adapting itself at every step 

 to its environment and to the work it is destined to perform.' In a protozoan 

 of varying form we are struck with the independence of outer body-form and 

 the form of the nucleus. 



The latter portion of the paper is occupied by a consideration of the nature 

 of the force which is characteristic of living protoplasm, and may be called 

 vital force. The writer deplores the prevalence of a conception of the forma- 

 tive power of protoplasm, which is merely mechanical, or like mechanical or 

 chemical forces. Since a power which causes is not necessarily at all like 

 the result produced, so the chemical and mechanical agencies at work in con- 

 nection with protoplasm do not argue that the force manifested by living pro- 

 toplasm resembles either chemical or mechanical forces. Rather it would, 

 more probably, be unlike them, and peculiar, since protoplasm is unique. 

 Further than this, towards a positive assertion as to the nature of the formative 

 power in protoplasm, Prof. Whitman does not go, except to argue that it is 

 a necessary attribute of the chemical substance, protoplasm. His words are 

 these : — ' The living cell may be regarded as a system of very complex 

 chemico-organic units, bound together by chemico-physiological bonds, and 

 displaying in their collective capacity functions and powers which are en- 

 tirely foreign to them as individual and isolated elements, and which are, there- 

 fore, indissolubly identified with the physiological connexus or consensus.' 



NOTICES OF RECENT ARTICLES. 



The microbe of dysentery. — Chantemese and Widal report the discovery 

 of a specific bacterium in dysentery {Progres Medical^ April 21, 188S). 

 Working in Cornil's laboratory, they have studied five cases of tropical dysen- 

 tery, and have found the same microbe in the lesions and stools of a fatal case, 

 as well as in the stools of four others. The bacteria were found in colonies 

 in and between the tubular glands of the intestine, in the lymph-glands, and 



* On this point it may be observed that one who considered that in non-niicleated Protista the diffuse nuclear 

 matter was the sole directive force would seem not to be inconsistent in holding the nucleus to be solely self- 

 active when the nuclear matter was coalesced to form a single nucleus. — O. 



