THE GRANULAR THEORY 191 



well as those recently repeated by me, on the protoplasm 

 of marine Ehizopoda, rather tend to show that such bodies 

 occur very commonly as deposits in the protoplasm of these 

 Protozoa, and certainly have nothing to do with the alveoli 

 of the distinctly honeycombed protoplasm which is also 

 present. That Kiinstler's 'vesicles were nothing more than 

 the similar granules or deposits of such frequent occurrence 

 in the protoplasm of Ehizopods, seems to me to follow 

 beyond all doubt from his remark that in well-nourished 

 Foraminifera these granules are the seat of the red colora- 

 tion. It is, however, a matter of common knowledge that 

 the seat of the red' coloration is formed, as a rule, by 

 droplets of fat, which are impregnated with pigment in 

 solution, as is obvious from their being readily soluble in 

 alcohol ; on the other hand, it is probably also due some- 

 times to bodies of the nature of Zooxanthellse, as I attempted 

 to show in 1886 in the case of Peneroplis. But in any 

 case we are not justified in referring these deposits, as 

 Kiinstler wishes to do, to the isolation of originally con- 

 nected alveoli of protoplasm ; his few observations are also 

 certainly insufficient to support an assumption so difficult 

 to comprehend. I am inclined to see in it an abortive 

 attempt to rescue some portion of his statements of 1882, as 

 to the protoplasm being composed of vesicle-like spherules. 

 But after the detailed expositions in the earlier portions of 

 this work, it is not necessary for me to state more precisely 

 why I regard this view to be erroneous now just as before. 



3. The so-called Granular Theory of Protoplasm 



As is well known, the earliest view with regard to the 

 constitution of protoplasm was that it consisted of a viscid 

 or slimy ground substance, in which numerous granules 

 were embedded. These granules, which from a long time 

 back have been considered as an indispensable constituent, 

 so to speak, of protoplasm, were distinguished by the 

 term protoplasmic granules from other ' granular contents 

 lodged in the protoplasm, upon the chemical nature of 

 which, as fat, starch, pigment, etc., it is possible to arrive 



