Search -
Typical Forms And Special Ends In Creation
Typical Forms And Special Ends In Creation Author:James McCosh, George Dickie Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BOOK SECOND. CO-ORDINATED SERIES OF FACTS, GIVING INDICATIONS OF COMBINED ORDER AND ADAPTATION THROUGHOUT THE VARIOUS KINGDOMS OF NATURE. CHAPTER I. THE... more » MINUTE STRUCTURE OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS. SECT. I. ORDER IN THE STRUCTURE OF THE CELL. We are to be chiefly occupied in these chapters in displaying the skill to be found in the plant and animal, as built up into their finished forms, with all their harmonious proportions and varied fitnesses. But before inspecting the finished temple, we may take a look at the materials of which it is built, and these we shall find to be like the stone of Solomon's temple, which " was made ready before it was brought thither, so that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was building." It has long been admitted among botanists, that the cell is the typical element in the structure of the plant, that the lower forms of plants actually consist of cells separate and independent, and that the higher are built of the same material, compacted into masses of varied texture. The general structure of the vegetable cell is very simple. On the outside there is a transparent membrane, called cell-wall, enclosing another part which has received various names, as endochrome, or internal utricle. In the fresh cell, the cell-wall and internal utricle are often in such close contact that the presence of the internal layer may be overlooked; but the action of various chemical agents produces shrinking of the inner layer, and thus its presence may Fio. 2. be demonstrated. The primary form of the entire cell is stated by some authors to be spherical; the principal modifications in shape are generally regarded as departures from that type. We are inclined to direct attention to the essential structure,...« less