Page:Life and death (1911).djvu/176

 chemical point of view this cellular juice is a mixture of very different materials, albumens, globulins, carbo-*hydrates, and fats, elaborated by the cell itself. It is a product of vital activity; it is not yet the seat of this activity. The living matter has taken refuge in the spongy tissue itself, in the spongioplasm.

According to other histologists, the comparison of protoplasm to a spongy mass does not give the most exact idea, and, in particular, it does not furnish the most general idea. It would be far better to say that the protoplasm possesses the structure of foam or lather. As was seen by Kunstler in 1880, a comparison with some familiar objects gives the best idea. Nothing could be more like protoplasm physically than the culinary preparation known as sauce mayonnaise, made with the aid of oil and a liquid with which oil does not mix. Emulsions of this kind were made artificially by Bütschli. He noted that these preparations mimicked all the aspects of cellular protoplasm. Thus, in the living cell there is a mixture of two liquids, non-miscible and of unequal fluidity. This mixture gives rise to the formation of little cells. The more consistent substance forms their supporting framework (Leydig's spongioplasm), while the other, which is more fluid, fills its interior (hyaloplasm).

However that may be, whether the primitive organization of the cellular protoplasm be that of a sponge, as is asserted by Leydig, or that of a ''sauce mayonnaise'', as is claimed by Bütschli and Kunstler, the complexity does not rest there. Further recourse must be made to analysis. Just as the tissue of a sponge, when torn, shows the fibres which constitute it, so the spongioplasm, the parietal substance, is