98 
THE- ORGANIC CELL 
the birds did not resort thither in search of food for the young, 
but obtained it in the vicinity of the nesting site. 
It was extremely difficult to photograph these birds owing 
to the fact that their movements were so rapid ; they would 
descend to the entrance of the nest like a streak of pale blue 
lightning, and in a flash would enter. 
Thus one was obliged to work the shutter at a great speed, 
and even then it often happened that, instead of finding the 
whole bird visible on the negative, perhaps only the tail would 
be seen projecting from the entrance. 
The brilliance of the blue on the wings, with the sun shining 
on it, may be judged from the photographs — the blue is 
rendered an absolute white. 
The young were a fortnight old when they left the nest 
and did not return to it. 
THE ORGANIC CELL 
Part III. — Its Methods of Division and Status in the 
Process of Heredity 
By E. Wynstone- Waters, F.R.S.Edin., &c., Late Senior 
Demonstrator of Anatomy at the Loyal College of Surgeons , 
Edinburgh 
Schleiden, that famous pioneer of the cell-theory, assumed 
that cells arose by a process of crystallisation from an un- 
organised substance which he termed ‘ cytoblastema.’ The 
later work of Remak, Kolliker, and others soon refuted this 
theory, and shortly afterwards, the very important teaching 
of Virchow that ‘ all cells come from pre-existing cells ’ came 
to be accepted, and since then this doctrine has become one 
of the central and fundamental principles of modern biology. 
Every cell is the result of the division of a pre-existing cell ; 
this process having gone on far back through the ages that 
have been, to the very dawn of all life. Life results from 
pre-existing life ; the so-called process of ‘ spontaneous genera- 
tion 5 certainly does not exist at the present time. 
Remak, as a result of his work on cell-division in the years 
