if The Beginning and End of Life 399 



hich had previously been considered relatively functionless 

 id inert. Although muscular fibres, as commonly under- 

 »od, are products of cells, it has long been known that 

 m some unicellular animals, as in the little Yorticella of 

 our ponds, a practical equivalent exists within the stalk 

 by which the creature is sustained, and which contracts 



I^kth all the force and activity of true muscle upon the 

 !^lightest stimulus. Now, however, Boveri gives us reason 

 to suspect the existence of something essentially similar 

 within the germ-cell itself, even before it has begun its 

 process of spontaneous fission. We now also know that 

 processes performed by the subdivisions of parts of the 

 contents of the one cell of which such creatures consist, 

 must be regarded as sexual processes, and such subdivisions 

 themselves as practically sexual organs; so that from this 

 point of view the minute organism becomes the equivalent 

 of an entire higher animal instead of being the equivalent 

 of merely one of its component cells. Thus if the higher 

 animals are to be regarded as consisting of a soma con- 

 taining germ-plasm, an essentially similar complexity must 

 exist in unicellular organisms which are so far sexual, and 

 Dr. Weismann's antithesis between them entirely breaks 

 down. That such an essential similarity in minute structure 

 does indeed exist has become a matter of direct observation. 

 That veteran and prince of microscopists. Dr. Dallinger, has 

 ascertained that in even the minutest and lowest organisms, 

 precisely equivalent changes occur to those which take place 

 in the nucleus of higher animals, and have been supposed 

 (by Weismann and others) to show the distinctness between 

 the germ-plasm containing • chromatin, and the other con- 

 stituents of the ovum.^ 



Further consideration will, we think, show that the anti- 



^ See Dr. Dallinger's Presidential Address delivered to the Royal Micro- 

 scopical Society on February 10th, 1886. 



