504 Royal Society. 



By gradually tracing the fibre or filament above-mentioned into 

 similar objects of larger size, the author endeavours to show that it 

 is not possible to draw a line of separation between the minutest fila- 

 ment, and an object being to all a])pearance composed of two spirals 

 running in opposite directions, and interlacing at certain regular in- 

 tervals ; an arrangement which produces in the entire object a flat- 

 tened fonn, and gives it a grooved appearance. It is, in fact, the 

 structure which, for want of a better term, he has called a. flat fila- 

 ment. The edge of this filament presents what, at first sight, seem 

 like segments, but which, in reality, are the consecutive curves of a 

 spiral thread. A transverse section of such an object is rudely re- 

 presented by the figure 8. This is also precisely the appearance pre- 

 sented by the minutest filament, generally termed Fibre : and the 

 author particularly refers to the oblique direction of the line sepa- 

 rating the apparent segments in the smaller filament, in connexion 

 with the oblique direction of the spaces between the curves of the 

 spiral threads in the larger one. 



The spiral form, which has heretofore seemed wanting, or nearly 

 so, in animal tissues, is then shown to be as general in animals as in 

 plants. Nervous tissue, muscle, minute blood-vessels, and the cry- 

 stalline lens, aflford instances in proof of this. And if the author's 

 view of identity in structure between the larger and the smaller fila- 

 ments be correct, it follows that spirals are much more general in 

 plants themselves than has been hitherto supposed; sj^irals would thus 

 appear, in fact, to be as universal as a fibrous structure. 



The tendency to the spiral form manifests itself very early. Of 

 this the most important instance is afforded by the corpuscle of the 

 blood, as above described. The author has also obtained an interesting 

 proof of it in cartilage from the ear of a rabbit ; where the nucleus, 

 lying loose in its cell, resembled a ball of twine, being composed at 

 its outer part of a coiled filament, which it was giving oiF to weave 

 the cell-wall ; — this cell-wall being no other than the last-formed por- 

 tion of what is termed the intercellular substance — the essential part 

 of cartilage. These nuclei in cartilage, as well as those in other tis- 

 sues, there is ground for believing to be descended, by fissiparous ge- 

 neration, from the nuclei of blood- corpuscles. 



The author then describes the mode of origin of the flat filament 

 or fibre, and its reproduction in various animal and vegetable tissues, 

 which he enumerates. He conceives that each filament is a com- 

 pound body which enlarges, and, from analog}', may contain the ele- 

 ments of future structures, formed by division and subdivision, to 

 which no limits can be assigned. 



He then traces the formation of muscle out of cells, which, ac- 

 cording to his observations, are derived from corpuscles of the blood, 

 to the state where there exists what is denominated the fibril. In 

 this process, there are to be observed the formation of a second order 

 of tubes within the original tube ; a peculiarly regular arrangem.ent 

 of discs within these second tubes ; the formation, first of rings and 

 then of spirals, out of discs so arranged ; the interlacing of the spirals ; 

 and the origin, in the space circumscribed by these, of spirals having 



