290 
R. A. HARPER 
Lepeschkin and all adherents of the so-called granular theories would make 
the disperse phase, consisting of the discrete particles, the bioplasts of 
Altmann, the plasomes of Wiesner, the chondra of Rohde, and, in general, 
the microsomes of older authors, the real living material units, while they 
would hold the continuous phase, their hyaloplasm or interstitial jelly, as 
dead or unorganized, perhaps a secretion of the granules. If Butschli's 
theory is correct, the protoplasm would be a foam. If Beijerinck's and 
Lepeschkin's theory is right it would perhaps be better called an emulsion, 
using the terms to distinguish the relative importance of the disperse and 
continuous phases. 
The crude simplicity and general inadequacy of these latter conceptions 
and the bitterness of the controversies which have been waged over them, 
especially by Biitschli and his followers, have done much to bring the whole 
subject of protoplasmic organization into disrepute. On the other hand the 
conception of protoplasm as an aggregate of complex compounds, a polyphase 
colloidal system or system of systems, seems to do much more adequate justice 
to the observed facts. The sols as at present commonly described permit 
only a single continuous phase, though the discontinuous phase might consist 
of an indefinite number of discrete bodies homogeneously distributed or even 
with zonation or other localization of certain elements according to their 
chemical and physical interrelations. But substances of greater viscosity 
may separate out as reticula and give us thus several continuous or par- 
tially continuous phases. The existence of such interlacing strands and 
films is a familiar fact of protoplasmic structure in the killed and fixed 
condition, and can also be observed in living pollen mother cells, spores, 
etc. Frommann's familiar figures of the protoplasm in the end cells of 
glandular hairs suggest such structures. 
Hofmeister emphasizes the importance of the surface tension membranes 
between the different substances in the cell which are due to their immis- 
cibility as furnishing just the means necessary to hinder diffusion between 
the different regions of the cell and to make possible the maintenance of the 
various structures and organs of the cell which the microscope reveals. 
This immiscibility of the different assumed substances makes possible also 
the different functions of the various cell parts, functions, as he points out, 
involving the simultaneous occurrence in different parts of the cell of dif-. 
ferent and frequently opposite chemical transformations such as hydration 
and dehydration, oxidation and reduction, synthesis and decomposition. 
The decomposition of glycocoll to urea presupposes a specific sedation of 
the reactions involved which implies an independent activity of the various 
intermediary substances produced such as could not exist if the protoplasm 
were a homogeneous mixture. The possibility of such reactions presupposes, 
for Hofmeister, a so-called chemical organization of the cell. The endless 
series of ferments and their products are thus separated and enabled to 
carry out their independent acceleratory reactions by virtue of the inter- 
