Fig. 176. Diagrammatic arrangement of partitions, represented by skeletal rods, in larval Echinoderm (Ophiura).
In Fig. [176] I have divided a circle into its four quadrants, and have bisected each quadrant by a circular arc (BC), passing from radius to periphery, as in the foregoing cases of cell-division; and I have again bisected, in a similar way, the triangular halves of each quadrant (DD). I have also inserted a small circle in the middle of the figure, concentric with the large one. If now we imagine those lines in the figure which I have drawn black to be replaced by solid rods we shall have at once the frame-work of an Ophiurid (Pluteus) larva. Let us imagine all these arms to be {393} bent symmetrically downwards, so that the plane of the paper is transformed into a spheroidal surface, such as that of a hemisphere, or that of a tall conical figure with curved sides; let a membrane be spread, umbrella-like, between the outstretched skeletal rods, and let its margin loop from rod to rod in curves which are possibly catenaries, but are more probably portions of an “elastic curve,” and the outward resemblance to a Pluteus larva is now complete. By various slight modifications, by altering the relative lengths of the rods, by modifying their curvature or by replacing the curved rod by a tangent to itself, we can ring the changes which lead us from one known type of Pluteus to another. The case of the Bipinnaria larvae of Echinids is certainly analogous, but it becomes
Fig. 177. Pluteus-larva of Ophiurid.
very much more complicated; we have to do with a more complex partitioning of space, and I confess that I am not yet able to represent the more complicated forms in so simple a way.
There are a few notable exceptions (besides the various unequally segmenting eggs) to the general rule that in cell-division the mother-cell tends to divide into equal halves; and one of these exceptional cases is to be found in connection with the development of “stomata” in the leaves of plants. The epidermal cells by which the leaf is covered may be of various shapes; sometimes, as in a hyacinth, they are oblong, but more often they have an irregular shape in which we can recognise, more or less clearly, a distorted or imperfect hexagon. In the case of the oblong cells, a transverse partition will be the least possible, whether the cell be equally or unequally divided, unless (as we have already seen) {394} the space to be cut off be a very small one, not more than
Fig. 178. Diagrammatic development of Stomata in Sedum. (Cf. fig. in Sachs’s Botany, 1882, p. 103.)
about three-tenths the area of a square based on the short side of the original rectangular cell. As the portion usually cut off is not nearly so small as this, we get the form of partition shewn in Fig. [179], and the cell so cut off is next bisected by a partition at right angles to the first; this latter partition splits, and the two last-formed cells constitute the so-called “guard-cells” of the stoma. In