On Animal and Vegetable Fibre. 317 



On Animal and Vegetable Fibre, as originally composed of 

 Twin Spiral Filaments, in which every other structure 

 has its origin : a Note, shewing the confirmation by 

 Agardh, hi 1852, of Observations recorded in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions for 1842. By Martin Barry, 

 M.D., F.R.S., F.R.S.E.* Communicated by the Author. 



When, in a paper " On Fibre/' in the Philosophical Trans- 

 actions for 1842, I published drawings of the cells of carti- 

 lage and the cells of coagulating blood, the walls of which 

 were represented as made up of fibre, it was said that I must 

 have formed the fibre with chemical re-agents. My announce- 

 ment at the same time, that this, as well as all other or- 

 ganic fibre, is originally composed of spiral filaments, num- 

 bering invariably two, was considered as denoting " contorted 

 views, not worth a moment's disputation.'' And my con- 

 clusion, from what I had seen in large spirals, that the spirals 

 of fibre, however small, contain the elements of future struc- 

 tures to be formed by division and subdivision, to which no 

 limits can be assigned, was ridiculed as " moonshine," and 

 " a myth." Even Hervey's announcement of the circulation 

 of the blood can scarcely have been held in more absolute 

 derision. 



Before venturing to publish observations so opposed to 

 existing views, I had of course extended my researches very 

 widely ; so widely, that the paper in which they were made 

 known contains the enumeration of more than fifty distinct 

 structures of the animal body in which I had found fibre 

 still presenting the compound form in question, and upwards 

 of 150 delineations of it, as seen in animals and plants, from 

 the'substance of the brain to the mould of cheese. 



It was soon said and published: "Dr Barry might as 

 well have entitled his paper ' On the Spiral Structure of the 

 Organic World. , "t To such a title, though suggested in 



* The substance of a Communication read before the Royal Society of Lon- 

 don, March 17, 1853. 



t Bowman, Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology, p. 511. 



