No. 2.] SPINNING ACTIVITIES OF PROTOPLASM. 389 
organization acts by unstable and freely protoplastic phenomena 
and structures : 
That while the phenomena pertaining to the organism as 
composed of these grosser masses and structures we call cells, are 
of vast importance; the phenomena pertaining to the organism 
as composed of those minuter and unstable portions which go 
to make up the cells, and which taken together throughout the 
whole mass, as well as separately, go to make up the protoplasm 
per se,— the living substance, as such ; — are of transcending 
importance, since they prove to be control phenomena for the 
former. In saying this I have in mind the familiar phenomena 
of caryokinesis, and certain unfamiliar phenomena of re-arrange- 
ments of the cytoplasmic substance which are treated of in the 
forthcoming paper, and which undoubtedly strengthen the ex- 
pression here of these conclusions. 
Here I will limit myself to saying that whatever may be the 
significance of the cell wall in the development of these eggs, it 
surely cannot be thought a separator, in either a physical or 
physiological sense, of the cell contents from other portions of 
the common mass. 
If we look upon the cell wall as a part of the machinery of 
the embryo, the larva, the coming or immediately present 
organism, that is, as an organ of the mass of living substance, 
just as is the nuclear membrane, or any other local modifi- 
cation for physiological purposes, we shall probably be nearer 
the truth than if we keep to an earlier conception, and hold 
that, for the living substance, cell walls a prison make. 
BALTIMORE, October, 1896. 
