A sufficient proof of the correctness of these remarks is to be
found in the further development of the views of botanists on the
intercellular substance and the cuticle, which might have adapted
themselves before 1850 to the new theory of cells, but instead of
doing so were moulded by the ideas current before 1845. It has been
shown in the preceding chapter how von Mohl gradually restricted the
theory of intercellular substance which he had proposed in 1836, and
had come in 1850 to regard this substance as only a cement which might
in many cases be perceived between the cell-walls. It should be added
here, that Schleiden in connection with his theory of cells considered
both the intercellular substance and the cuticle to be supplementary
secretions from the cells, and made the former fill the intercellular
spaces, just as laticiferous and resiniferous passages are filled
with secretions from the adjacent cells (1845). Unger too in 1855
(‘Anatomie und Physiologie der Pflanzen’) thought the existence of a
cement between the cells necessary to prevent their falling asunder.
Schacht, who in his ‘Pflanzenzelle’ of 1852 had followed Schleiden in
explaining the intercellular substance and the cuticle as secretions or
excreta from the cells of the plant, still kept on the whole to this
view in 1858, though he modified it in some important points. This
theory of Schleiden and Schacht was first opposed by Wigand in a series
of essays (1850-1861), in which in strict adherence to von Mohl’s
theory of apposition he sought to prove, that the layers which are
visible in wood-cells as intermediate laminae in the partition-walls,
and which till then had been regarded as a cement between contiguous
cells, an intercellular substance, were nothing else than the thin
primary membranous laminae formed in the process of cell-division,
and subjected to subsequent chemical change, while the secondary
layers of thickening in von Mohl’s sense lie on both sides of them.
The cuticle on the epidermis was explained in a corresponding manner.
Though Sanio in 1863 raised a variety of objections to Wigand’s view,
he still adhered to it in principle, and found a strong confirmation
of it in the fact, that he succeeded in producing the well-known
cellulose-reaction in the intercellular substance of wood-cells when
freed from foreign admixtures.
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