CELL THEORIES. 121 



5th edition, pp. cxv. and cxvi.). No doubt Dr. 

 Sharpey distinguished clearly the nuclei " attached 

 to the surface of the filamentous bundles or in their 

 interior " from the rounded and oval corpuscles and 

 irregular particles met with in the interstices of the 

 tissue," which he said were "probably to be con- 

 sidered as belonging to the interstitial fluid ; " but 

 those who imputed importance to that latter variety 

 of corpuscles had little help for it, at that time, but 

 to associate them with nuclei. 



In the present day the protoplasmic element 

 has assumed an enormous importance, casting the 

 nucleus into the shade, while the reign of cell-walls 

 has come to an end altogether. But to speak of 

 life, as is sometimes done, as if it were an inherent 

 property of a particular chemical substance, is 

 surely going too far, and is a view which has 

 nothing true in it which is not more than thirty 

 years old ; for it has long been familiar to every 

 one that life never exists without the presence of 

 nitrogenous substance of an albuminoid character ; 

 and, though it has since been discovered that life 

 in various instances exists in non-nucleated struc- 

 tureless masses of protoplasm, that is a very different 

 thing from life being a property of protoplasm. 

 Further, it may very fairly be questioned if some 

 of the simple organisms are not rather to be com- 



