Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/48

40 attached to each other and form a cluster or a chain, or they may separate and become independent isolated cells. The multiplication, under favorable conditions of light, air, temperature, moisture and food, goes on with extraordinary rapidity, so that in a few hours many thousand new individuals may arise from a parent bacterium.

Connected with the life-history of a bacterium cell is the formation in its substance, in many species and under certain conditions, of a highly refractile shiny particle called a spore. At first sight a spore seems as if it were the nucleus of the bacterium cell, but it is not always present when multiplication by cleavage is taking place, and when present it does not appear to take part in the fission. On the other hand, a spore, from the character of its envelope, possesses great power of resistance, so that dried bacteria, when placed in conditions favorable to germination, can through their spores germinate and resume an active existence. Spore formation seems, therefore, to be a provision for continuing the life of the bacterium under conditions which, if spores had not formed, would have been the cause of its death.

The time has gone by to search for the origin of living organisms by a spontaneous aggregation of molecules in vegetable or other infusions, or from a layer of formless primordial slime diffused over the bed of the ocean. Living matter during our epoch has been, and continues to be, derived from pre-existing living matter, even when it possesses the simplicity of structure of a bacterium, and the morphological unit is the cell.

As the future of the entire organism lies in the fertilized egg cell, we may now briefly review the arrangements, consequent on the process of segmentation, which lead to the formation, let us say in the egg of a bird, of the embryo or young chick.

In the latter part of the last century, C. F. Wolff observed that the beginning of the embryo was associated with the formation of layers, and in 1817 Pander demonstrated that in the hen's egg at first one layer, called mucous, appeared; then a second or serous layer, to be followed by a third, intermediate or vascular layer. In 1828 von Baer amplified our knowledge in his famous treatise, which from its grasp of the subject created a new epoch in the science of embryology. It was not, however, until the discovery by Schwann of cells as constant factors in the structure of animals and in their relation to development that the true nature of these layers was determined. We now know that each layer consists of cells, and that all the tissues and organs of the body are derived from them. Numerous observers have devoted themselves for many years to the study of each layer, with the view of determining the part which it takes in the formation of the constituent parts of the body, more