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 
amceboid 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 acorpuscle, 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. 
