210 THEORY OF THE CELLS.
gated into a fibre; and so with the other changes of form. Division of the cells can have no analogue in common crystals, because that which is once deposited is incapable of any further change. But this phenomenon may be made to accord with the representation of crystals capable of imbibition, just as well as the coalescence of numerous cells in the manner described at page 184 does. And if we ascribe to a layer of a crystal capable of imbibition the power of producing chemical changes in organic substances, we can very well understand also the origin of secondary deposits on its inner surface as they occur in cells. For if, in accordance with the laws of crystallization, the lamina has become expanded into a vesicle, and its cavity has become filled by imbibition with a solution of organic substance, there may be materials formed by means of the converting influence of the lamina, which cannot any longer be held in solution. These may, then, either crystallize within the vesicle, as new crystals capable of imbibition under the form of cells; or if they are allied to the substance of the vesicle, they may so crystallize as to form part of the system of the vesicle itself: the latter may occur in two ways, the new matters may be applied to the increase of the vesicle, or they may form new layers on its inner surface from the same cause which led to the first formation of the vesicle itself as a layer. In the cells of plants these secondary deposits have a spiral arrangement. This is a very important fact, though the laws of crystallization do not seem to account for the absolute necessity of it. If, however, it could be mathematically proved from the laws of the crystallization of inorganic bodies, that under the altered circumstances in which bodies capable of imbibition are placed, these deposits must be arranged in spiral forms, it might be asserted without hesitation that the plastic power of cells and the fundamental powers of crystals are identical.
We come now, however, to some peculiarities in the plastic power of cells, to which we might, at first sight, scarcely expect to find anything analogous in crystals. The attractive power of the cells manifests a certain degree of election in its operation; it does not attract every substance present im the cytoblastema, but only particular ones; and here a muscle-cell, there a fat-cell, is generated from the same fluid, the blood. Yet crystals afford us an example of a precisely similar pheno-
