CELL THEORIES. 



133 



also obliged to think it a pity that Dr. Beale has 

 not recognized the true place of muscle in his 

 theory. He calls the contractile substance of 

 muscle "formed matter," which indeed it is 

 in the sense of being raised to a higher state of 

 organization than the corpuscles out of which it is 

 formed ; but the formed matter of Dr. Beale is, ac- 

 cording to his definition, no longer vital ; and that 

 is not the case with muscular fibre, which not only 

 has the vital power of contractility, but the power of 

 consuming other than its own substance in produc- 

 tion of contraction. The real definition of a striped 

 muscular fibre is, that it is a compound living cor- 

 puscle which has no reproductive power, but has a 

 far more highly developed contractility than the 

 amoeboid corpuscles. 



It may be stated that at the present day there 

 is no difficulty in believing in the uninterrupted 

 sequence of corpuscles by reproduction through all 

 generations. The -melting of the spermatozoa and 

 germinal vesicle within the ovum may be regarded 

 as a variety of conjugation, resulting in the forma- 

 tion of a corpuscle, which by its fissiparous division 

 constitutes the wholly corpuscular germinal mem- 

 brane, from which are furnished the parents of 

 every living corpuscle in the adult body, including 

 the ova or the spermatozoa, according to the sex. 



