THE "ORGANISATION" OF PROTOPLASM 221 



to a jelly-fish. Briicke brought forward facts, in so far that he 

 tried to interpret the protoplasmic streamings in the hairs of 

 Urtica not as simply the streamings of a liquid, but rather as 

 giving the impression that the protoplasm, " or the contractile 

 cell body, contained a fluid which streamed through it and 

 contained numerous small granules." So far, therefore, as it is 

 possible to understand the ideas briefly thrown out by Briicke, 

 one may well assume that he imagined to himself in the proto- 

 plasm a firm contractile framework steeped in fluid, just as was 

 described later by Heitzmann, 



That Briicke's view, although it was disputed by Max Schultze 

 (1863), found approval is obvious from the fact that the 

 assumption of solid and fluid parts in protoplasm became more 

 and more widely spread. Although de Bary (1862) denied 

 Briicke's view of the processes of streaming in protoplasm, he 

 believed it necessary to accept his opinion upon the organisation 

 of the cell. Cienkowsky (1863), from a study of the plasmodia 

 of Myxomycetes, arrived in like manner at the assumption of a 

 thicker hyaline ground substance, capable of contraction and 

 expansion, and of a fluid granular substance. How he repre- 

 sented to himself the mutual relations of the two substances in 

 the building up of the protoplasm, remains, however, rather 

 obscure, the more so as it follows from his description that he 

 regards the contractile ground substance also as fluid. How 

 could we in any other way understand the expression on p. 414: 

 " The plasmodium thus gives an indubitable example of a fluid 

 stage in the development of an organism " ! Although de Bary 

 (1864) disputed this distinction of two substances in the plas- 

 modium, a contractile and a fluid, and regarded it with Kiihne 

 as contractile throughout its whole mass, he yet assumes a 

 similar difference, inasmuch as he admits local differences in its 

 " cohesion, fluidity, and mobility," which, moreover, were subject 

 to frequent change. The plasmodium is supposed to consist 

 therefore only of one substance, but its physical character is 

 frequently liable to local variation. The protoplasm of these 

 Protista is said to possess a "soft consistency," but in any case 

 they would be "in no way bodies in the least of a fluid, trickling 

 nature." 



Hofmeister, who in 1867 called protoplasm a "viscid mixture 

 of various organic substances, or a thickish slime," and often 

 makes use of the physical properties of fluids to explain the 

 behaviour of protoplasmic bodies, yet declared himself, as far 

 back as 1865, and again also in 1867, in favour of a special 

 organisation of protoplasm. He remarks on p. 8 that every 

 attempt to obtain a conception of the phenomena of protoplasmic 



