XXY. On the Continuity of the Protoplasm through the Walls of Vegetable Cells. 
By Walter Gardiner, B.A., late Scholar of Clare College, Cambridge. 
Communicated by W. T. Thiselton Dyer, C.M.G., F.R.S. 
Received April 16,—Read April 26, 1883. 
[Plates 68-70.] 
In Professor Sachs’ latest publication the following remarkable passage occurs f" 
“Every plant, however highly organised, is fundamentally a protoplasmic body 
forming a connected whole, which as it grows on, is externally clothed by a cell 
membrane, and internally traversed by innumerable transverse and longitudinal 
walls.” The above statement, both as being the outcome of pure physiological 
thought, and invested as it is with the authority of so distinguished a botanist, 
cannot fail to be very striking, on account of its forcible suggestiveness, and any 
observations which demonstrate an actual continuity in organs of large extent, must 
be of interest to show the truth of Sachs’ remarks in a sense somewhat more literal 
than his own. 
At the time of writing, the instances of the existence of any such continuity of the 
protoplasm were but few. Sachs! himself in 1863, and HansteinJ in the following 
year, had proved that in sieve-tubes an actual perforation of the sieve plate did take 
place, and that by means of the sieve-pores a connexion between the contents of 
neighbouring cells was established. Then- results in this direction were fully 
confirmed by Wilhelm, § JanczewskiJ and Russo w. IT 
But it was not until the year 1880 that any further steps were made, when 
Tangi/' 4 ' demonstrated that in the ripe endosperm cells of Strychnos Nux-vomica, 
Phoenix dactylifera, and Euterpe oleracea the cell-walls were perforated by fine proto¬ 
plasmic threads. His observations were in the main confirmed by Strasburger,+! 
* ‘ Vorlesungen iiber Pflanzen-Physiologie,’ p. 102. 
t Sachs’ ‘ Flora,’ 1863, p. 68. 
+ Hanstein, ‘Die Milehsaftgefasse.’ Berlin, 1864, p. 23. 
§ ‘Zur Kentniss des Siebrohrenapparates Dicotyler Pflanzen.’ Leipzig, 1880. 
|| ‘ Etudes comparees sur les tubes cribreux.’ Cherbourg, 1881. 
T ‘ Sitzber. Dorpater Naturf. Ges.,’ April 23. Also in the same journal, 1882, pp. 257-327. 
** “ Ueber offene Communication zwischen Zellen des Endosperms.” Pringshejm’s ‘ Jahrbiicher fur 
Wiss. Bot.,’ vol. xii., 1880. 
ft ‘Bau und Wachfethum,’ p. 23, et sen, 
