96 THE BIOC08M08 PRELIMINARY. 



the microscope, which is verily the telescope 

 reversed, and revealing to us a wholly new 

 world of living individuals. For the cell has 

 life that is its fundamental category. 



The word cell is not the best one for the 

 thing. This is not a hollow chamber or cup 

 holding a fluid in a wall or enclosure ; at least 

 such is not its general character a natural 

 conception of it from its name. .On the con- 

 trary the cell must be grasped in its simplest 

 form as a mass, which tends to the globular 

 when it is single, as in a unicellular plant. 

 Still it is capable of assuming many forms, 

 both by itself (as in case of the amoeba), and 

 by association with other cells. Sometimes, 

 indeed, this mass hollows itself out, and builds 

 for itself also a pretty firm wall (found in 

 plants more than in animals) ; then it becomes 

 literally cellular, though this form, as before 

 said, is not by any means the prevailing one. 

 Probably the earliest observer saw such cells 

 first, and gave the name which is now too 

 strongly intrenched in the science to be ex- 

 pelled. 



The next point in the conception of the cell 

 is to consider how this, its mass, is organ- 

 ized. It shows the following main divisions: 

 first, the central principle of it is the so-called 

 nucleus, a rounded definite shape, long ago 

 recognized by Fontana (1781), but without 



