TACTS 181 



ance of all heterogeneousness or discontinuity in conduction 

 phenomena. 



Even in the vegetable kingdom it is possible that pheno- 

 mena of direct protoplasmic conduction take place through 

 the whole extent of an individual by means of the little 

 protoplasmic tractus so often described as perforating the 

 separating membranes of two neighbouring cells. Still, 

 on the one hand, the continuity established by the tractus 

 is not sufficient to secure to the cytoplasm the benefit of 

 the nucleary influence from neighbouring cells in experi- 

 ments of merotomy ; and, on the other, even when such 

 continuity is real, it is from one cell to all neighbouring cells 

 and so disperses through the individual as a whole the effect 

 of the rupture of colloid equilibrium, which was produced at 

 one point of the individual, just as in wireless telegraphy. 1 



When wireless telegraphy was discovered men cried 

 out with admiration at the miracle. Later on, learning 

 its grave inconveniences as a system of correspondence, 

 they ended by observing that the real improvement to give 

 it would be a wire, that is, they came back to telegraphy 

 already known which, save in such exceptional cases as 

 balloons and ships, is much handier for us. Just so, in the 

 living animal we find, along with the wireless telegraphy 

 which sets up correlation through the interior medium, 

 telegraphing with a wire producing co-ordination by means 

 of the nervous system. 



The Nervous System 

 The rudiment of the nervous system consists in a cell 



1 A piece of protoplasm which has been deprived of nucleus in 

 one cell 'by experimental section of the rest of the cell is fatally con- 

 demned to degenerate and die in spite of the protoplasmic relations 

 which unite it with the neighbouring cell that still possesses its 

 nucleus. 



