The Present Condition of Organic Nature: Lecture I. (of VI.), "Lectures to Working Men", at the Museum of Practical Geology, 1863, on Darwin's Work: "Origin of Species"Huxley, Thomas Henry
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The Present Condition of Organic Nature: Lecture I. (of VI.), "Lectures to Working Men", at the Museum of Practical Geology, 1863, on Darwin's Work: "Origin of Species"
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882. On the origin of species; Evolution (Biology)
things that are called ganglionic corpuscles. If we take a slice of the
bone and examine it, we shall find that it is very like this diagram
of a section of the bone of an ostrich, though differing, of course,
in some details; and if we take any part whatsoever of the tissue, and
examine it, we shall find it all has a minute structure, visible only
under the microscope. All these parts constitute microscopic anatomy
or 'Histology.' These parts are constantly being changed; every part is
constantly growing, decaying, and being replaced during the life of the
animal. The tissue is constantly replaced by new material; and if you go
back to the young state of the tissue in the case of muscle, or in the
case of skin, or any of the organs I have mentioned, you will find that
they all come under the same condition. Every one of these microscopic
filaments and fibres (I now speak merely of the general character of the
whole process)--every one of these parts--could be traced down to
some modification of a tissue which can be readily divided into little
particles of fleshy matter, of that substance which is composed of the
chemical elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, having such
a shape as this (Fig. 2). These particles, into which all primitive
tissues break up, are called cells. If I were to make a section of a
piece of the skin of my hand, I should find that it was made up of these
cells. If I examine the fibres which form the various organs of all
living animals, I should find that all of them, at one time or other,
had been formed out of a substance consisting of similar elements; so
that you see, just as we reduced the whole body in the gross to that
sort of simple expression given in Fig. 1, so we may reduce the whole
of the microscopic structural elements to a form of even greater
simplicity; just as the plan of the whole body may be so represented
in a sense (Fig. 1), so the primary structure of every tissue may be
represented by a mass of cells (Fig. 2).
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