322 MAGNALIA NATURE: OR THE GREATER 



that we look too much to the individuality of the individual 

 cell, and that the organism, at least in the embryonic body, 

 is a continuous syncytium. Hofmeister and Sachs have 

 repeatedly told us that in the plant, the growth of the mass, 

 the growth of the organ, is the primary fact ; and De Bary 

 has summed up the matter in his aphorism, Die Pflanze bildet 

 Zellen, nicht die Zelle bildet Pfianzen. And in many other ways 

 the extreme position of the cell-theory, that the cells are the 

 ultimate individuals, and that the organism is but a colony of 

 quasi-independent cells, has of late years been called in question. 



There are no problems connected with morphology that 

 appeal so closely to my mind, or to my temperament, as 

 those that are related to mechanical considerations, to mathe- 

 matical laws, or to physical and chemical processes. 



I love to think of the logarithmic spiral that is engraven 

 over the grave of that great anatomist, John Goodsir (as it 

 was over that of the greatest of the Bernouillis), so graven 

 because it interprets the form of every molluscan shell, of tusk 

 and horn and claw, and many another organic form besides. 

 I like to dwell upon those lines of mechanical stress and 

 strain in a bone, that give it its strength where strength is re- 

 quired, that Hermann Meyer and J. Wolff described, and on 

 which Roux has bestowed some of his most thoughtful work ; 

 or on the kindred conformations that Schwendener, botanist 

 and engineer, demonstrated in the plant ; or on the ' stream- 

 lines ' in the bodily form of fish or bird, from which the naval 

 architect and the aviator have learned so much. I admire 

 that old paper of Peter Harting's, in which he paved the way 

 for investigation of the origin of spicules, and of all the 

 questions of crystallisation or pseudo-crystallisation in pre- 

 sence of colloids, on which subject Lehmann has written his 

 recent and beautiful book. I sympathise with the efforts of 

 Henking, Rhumbler, Hartog, Gallardo, Leduc, and others to 

 explain on physical lines the phenomena of nuclear division. 



