164 GENERAL RETROSPECT.
cells of the chorda dorsalis was compared with that of vegetable cells. Were the cells of plants developed merely as
infinitely minute vesicles which progressively expand, were
the circumstances of their development less characteristic
than those pointed out by Schleiden, a comparison, in the
sense here required, would scarcely have been possible. We
endeavoured to prove in the first section that the complicated
process of development in the cells of plants recurs in those
of cartilage and of the chorda dorsalis. We remarked the
similarity in the formation of the cell-nucleus, and of its
nucleolus in all its modifications, with the nucleus of vegetable
cells, the pre-existence of the cell-nucleus and the development
of the cell around it, the similar situation of the nucleus in
relation to the cell, the growth of the cells, and the thickening
of their wall during growth, the formation of cells within
cells, and the transformation of the cell-contents just as in
the cells of plants. Here, then, was a complete accordance
in every known stage in the progress of development of two
elementary parts which are quite distinct, in a physiological
sense, and it was established that the principle of development in two such parts may be the same, and so far as could be ascertained in the cases here compared, it is really the
same.
But regarding the subject from this point of view we are compelled to prove the universality of this principle of development, and such was the object of the second section. For so long as we admit that there are elementary parts which originate according to entirely different laws, and between which and the cells which have just been compared as to the principle of their development there is no connexion, we must presume that there may still be some unknown difference in the laws of the formation of the parts just compared, even though they agree in many points. But, on the contrary, the greater the number of physiologically different elementary parts, which, so far as can be known, originate in a similar manner, and the greater the difference of these parts in form and physiological signification, while they agree in the perceptible phenomena of their mode of formation, the more safely may we assume that all elementary parts have one and the same
