LIFE OF THE PLANT-CELL. 99 



frequently and most readily observed. As it happened accidentally that 

 these motions were first observed in the latter organs, as being more fre- 

 quently and more particularly examined than the common cells, fancy was 

 at once busied in erecting therefrom all sorts of wonderful systems. It is 

 to these motions that those amongst us who are gifted with speculative 

 heads are indebted for the vegetable Spermatozoa. But it is to be 

 hoped that we shall soon be delivered from them, as such true and sober 

 observers as Fritsche* and Nagelif for plants, and KollikerJ for ani- 

 mals, have declared war on good grounds against the animality of 

 the Spermatozoa. That the supposed change of form of the minute, 

 elongated, crescentic starch-granules in the Onagraacece depends upon 

 optical illusion, is easily ascertained by the attentive and unprejudiced 

 observer. There can be no question as to its not being a vital phe- 

 nomenon, because the motions continue even in the alcoholic tincture of 

 iodine (an absolute poison for all vegetable and animal life), of which 

 any one may readily convince himself, and which Fritsche has, with his 

 well-known accuracy, shown to be the case in a great number of plants. 

 No person but one blinded by preconceived notions, and looking every 

 where for prodigies, and especially not under the cautious guidance and 

 support of a sound philosophy of nature, can find anything extraordinary 

 in the perfectly natural occurrence of this universal physical phenomenon 

 in the contents of the pollen-cell, or endeavour, with empty fancies, to 

 supply the gap which he imagines nature to have left. 



Respecting the ultimate cause of this phenomenon we know nothing at 

 all ; electrical tensions and the balancing of electrical forces, consequent 

 upon chemical processes, have been provisionally proposed as an ex- 

 planation. It is better to wait and direct our activity to something else, 

 than to waste our own and others' time with premature views and untenable 

 fictions. 



VI. Motions of the Vegetable- Cells. 



44. In the spore-cells of certain of the lower aquatic plants, there 

 is exhibited, for some time after their quitting the mother-cell, 

 occasionally also some time before their doing so, a locomotion 

 resembling the molecular movement ; but with the difference, that 

 in this case the motions are more considerable, and effected by 

 means of vibratile cilia. 



Perhaps in no case has the want of sound philosophical principles led 

 to greater phantasies than in the above phenomenon. The subject has 

 become still more involved by the statement in former times of a multi- 

 tude of supposed facts, the immediate offspring of imperfect observation, 

 and which had no actual existence. Meyen, to whom we are indebted 

 for a very industrious compilation of all that has been said on the subject, 

 (Physiologic, vol. iii.) says that he found himself compelled to make a 



* Ueber den Pollen. St. Petersburg, 1837. From the Mem. de 1'Acad. Imp. des 

 Sc. de St. Petersburg, printed separately, p. 24, et seq. 



f Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Pollens bei den Phanerogamen. Zurich, 1842. 



\ Beitrage zur Kenntniss der Geschlechtsverhaltnisse und der Saatnenflussigkeit 

 wirbelloser Thiere, u. s. w. Berlin, 1841, p. 49. 



L. c. 



H 2 



