intercellular relations of protoplasts. 
61 
ON THE INTERCELLULAR RELATIONS OF 
PROTOPLASTS.* 
BY WILLIAM HILLHOUSE, B.A., F.L.S., 
SCHOLAR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, PROFESSOR OF BOTANY AND 
VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY, MASON SCIENCE COLLEGE, BIRMINGHAM. 
INTRODUCTION.-[ABSTRACT.] 
During the past few years the one preponderating study 
in which vegetable physiologists have been engaged is the 
elucidation of the internal phenomena of the vegetable cell. 
Since the time when Schleiden first suggested that in the 
study of the life-history of the individual cell we should find 
the true basis of the study of plant life, von Mold published 
in Wagner’s “ Handworterbuch der Pliysiologie ” an account 
of its structure and life-history, f and Hofmeister gave to the 
world his far broader and more incisive work,]; the ball has 
rolled on apace, gathering vigour as it has proceeded, until 
now at length we appear to be within arm’s length of some 
grand generalisation. The mass of facts which within recent 
years has been brought together by a host of observers, 
pre-eminent amongst whom, in this department, stands 
Strasburger, the gifted author of the modern conception of 
vegetable embryology, is simply incredible. What is now 
needed is someone who shall collect these masses of isolated 
phenomena and weld them into one organic whole, who shall 
do for this decade what von Mold and Hofmeister did 
respectively for theirs. 
One by one the old conceptions of vegetable life have 
given way to the new; the barriers which have apparently 
isolated the vegetable from the animal world have been 
broken down. It is but a few years since botanists were 
taught that the cell was everything; in modern teaching the 
vegetable organism is a whole, with its protoplasmic body, it 
is true, broken into fragments which show apparent isolation, 
but which, nevertheless, show clear co-ordination. To the 
acceptance of this view Sachs, by far the greatest of modern 
vegetable physiologists, has mainly conduced. And now it 
appears as if another line of demarcation is to be wiped out, 
* Transactions of the Birmingham Natural History and Micro¬ 
scopical Society. Read December 4th, 1883. 
f “ Grundziige der Anatomie und Physiologie der vegetabilisclien 
Zelle ” (1851). 
] “Die Lenre von der Pflanzenzelle” (1867). 
