On the nucleus of the animal and vegetable "cell" / / by Martin Barry.

  • Martin Barry
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the nucleus of the animal and vegetable "cell" / / by Martin Barry. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/36 page 221
    to be the case; and here also Professor Goodsir informs me that he adopts my views. It may be added, that at a recent meeting of this Society the same talented observer mentioned an observation of his own on some of the poligastric Infusoria, as fully confirming mine,—that the nucleus sometimes passes directly into a spi¬ ral form while still within its cell. And in the same quarter my observation has been confirmed,—that the spiral is the most primitive of forms. (To this, I have no doubt, is refer¬ able the spiral form retained through life by some of the lower animals :—for instance, the spiral-shelled Mollusca.) Fig. 32. M In the blood of animals which had been kept for periods varying from 18 hours to two days after death, I found the nuclei of the corpuscles dividing into segments (fig. 32),* and the segments sending out processes; which pro¬ cesses, becoming acuminated, passed into cilia. The vibrations of these cilia gave to the now star-like corpuscles a locomotive power. This I have observed to be precisely the mode of origin of the mammife- rous Spermatozoa,— each of which is represented by one of the segments in that figure. (The segments and the cilia, it will be seen, are processes from the hyaline. Compare with fig. 8.) I believe that when animal and vegetable substances are macerated in water, particles of hyaline (fig. 1), which are the true cell-germs, may assume an independent life in the form of Infusoria; and thus go far to explain the so-called spontaneous generation.t It may be added, as an observation I have not published before, that the markings on the egg-shells of Birds afford a beautiful display of colouring matter, obviously formed in cells, and there seen on a scale so large as to be visible without a magnifying powxer; the colouring matter being sometimes of deepest hue in what had been the situation of the nucleus, * Phil Trans., 1841, Plate XXII., Fig. 105, y. t On this subject see my views more at length, in No. lxx. of this Journal (October 1843), pp. 219, 220,
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