[81] Belonging to the class Ophiomorpha; see loc. cit., pp. 27 and 43.
[82] See Contemporary Review, September, 1879, p. 25.
[83] Valisneria spiralis: these are distinct male and female flowers. The male flowers are on short stalks, which break and allow their flowers to rise to the surface and there float, scattering their pollen. The female flowers grow on long coiled stalks, which uncoil and allow them to rise to the surface to be fertilized, after which the stalks recoil and withdraw them again below. This is a monocotyledonous plant of the order Hydrocharideæ.
[84] See Contemporary Review, September, 1879, p. 37.
[85] Loc. cit., p. 37.
[86] Loc. cit., p. 36.
[87] There is an ambiguity in the use of the word “cell.” By some writers it is only used to denote a particle of protoplasm with a nucleus (whether or not it is enclosed in a “cell-wall”), while such a particle without a nucleus is called by them a Cytod. By others it is used to denote any particle of protoplasm enclosed in a cell-wall, and by others, again, as denoting any distinct particle of protoplasm with or without a nucleus, and with or without a cell-wall. It is in this widest sense that it is here proposed to use the term “cell,” distinguishing, where needful, those with a nucleus or envelope as “a nucleated” or “a walled” cell.
As yet the two natures and functions of the nucleus and nucleolus are by no means cleared up. The nucleus often appears to contain a complexity of fibrils, transitory aggregations of which have been supposed to cause the appearance of nucleoli. The apparently simplest protoplasm is probably of really very complex, most minute structure.
[88] Contemporary Review, September, 1879, p. 37.
[89] Here reference may be made to the name Bathybius, which was given by Professor Huxley to a material found at the sea bottom, of great extent and indefinite shape, and which was supposed by him to be the remains of a mass of once living protoplasm, but which there is much reason now to suppose was really but inorganic material. Reference is here made to this, because some persons seem to imagine that if Bathybius were a lowly animal some important speculative consequences would follow. But this is an utter mistake. It is generally admitted already that there are living structureless protoplasmic organisms of no definite shape, and of which detached particles can live and grow. It would make no real difference whatever to the known facts of life if a creature of the kind should be found as large as the Pacific Ocean, with its portions exceptionally detachable and its shape irregular in the extreme.