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THE CELL-THEORY 



contents of fused cells, &c. It is obviously and readily seen to be 

 nothing but a metamorphosis of the periplastic substance, in all 

 respects comparable to that which occurs in ossification, or in the 

 development of tendon. In this case we might expect that as there 

 is an areolar form of connective tissue, so we should find some similar 

 arrangement of muscle ; and such may indeed be seen very beautifully 

 in the terminations of the branched muscles, as they are called. In 

 7 the termination of such a muscle, from the lip of the rat, is 

 cells " of areolated connective tissue are seen 

 passing into the divided ex- 



fig 



shown, and the stellate 



Branched muscle, ending in stellate connective 

 " cells," from the upper lip of the rat. 



tremities of the muscular bundle, 

 becoming gradually striated as 

 they do so. 



We have already exceeded 

 our due limits, and we must 

 therefore reserve for another 

 place the application of these 

 views to other tissues. There is, 

 however, one application of the 

 mode of termination of the 

 branched muscles to which we 

 have just referred, which is of 

 too great physiological import- 

 ance to be passed over in silence. 

 In the muscle it is obvious 

 enough that whatever homology 

 there may be between the stel- 

 late " cells " and the muscular 

 continuous, there is no functiotial 

 no contractile faculty. But a 



bundles with which they are 

 analogy, the stellate bodies havin 

 nervous tubule is developed in essentially the same manner as a 

 muscular fasciculus, the only difference being that fatty matters 

 take the place of syntonin. Now, it commonly happens that the 

 nerve-tubules terminate in stellate bodies of a precisely similar 

 nature ; and these, in this case, are supposed to possess important 

 nervous functions, and go by the name of "ganglionic cells." 

 From what has been' said, however, it is clear that these may be 

 genetically and not functionally connected with the nervous tubules, 

 and that, so far from being the essential element of the nervous 

 centres and expansions, it is possible that the " ganglionic cells " have 

 as little nervous function as the stellate cells in the lip of the rat have 

 contractile function. 



