must separate into two.’ He considered the first supposition to be the
probable one, rejecting Unger’s statement that the nuclei are formed
after the division. It is surprising that after these considerations
von Mohl thought that his own observations necessarily confirmed
Schleiden’s theory of cell-formation, although he noticed beside that
the nucleus never forms a part of the cell-wall, an essential feature
in that theory; but in fact von Mohl took the membrane which according
to Schleiden separates from the nucleus for the primordial utricle.
But these mistakes are soon followed by the right conjecture, that
the substance of the primordial utricle may be identical with the
mucilaginous mass, which commonly encloses the nucleus, and so with
that which von Mohl two years later named protoplasm. In this later
treatise (‘Botanische Zeitung,’ 1846), in which he proves that the
well-known movements in the interior of cells are made not by the
watery cell-sap but by the protoplasm, he states (p. 75) that it is
the protoplasm which produces the nucleus, that the organisation of
the nucleus ushers in the formation of the new cell, and that contrary
to Schleiden’s theory the protoplasm completely envelopes the nucleus,
which always occupies the centre of very young cells, as is the case
especially in the endosperm-cells observed by Schleiden. He then shows
how the protoplasm of young cells at first solid afterwards forms
sap-cavities and stretches between them in walls, bands or threads, the
substance of which exhibits the streaming movement. Von Mohl strangely
neglected on this occasion to compare carefully his former observations
on the origin of spores and the division of Alga-cells with his new
results, and to seek for the essential resemblances between them; on
the contrary he said emphatically that the cell-division in Cladophora
is probably a quite different process from the multiplication of
tissue-cells in higher plants.
The discoveries of Unger and von Mohl up to the year 1846 were quite
sufficient to refute Schleiden’s theory, but not to give a clear
and general view of the processes in the formation of cells; the
different kinds of cell-formation were neither carefully distinguished
from one another, nor could they be referred to a common principle.
Both observers had endeavoured to conjecture the course of events
from certain data, supplying by inference what they had not directly
observed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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