CodalSearch this book — or all of Codal…⌘K
nydus/On Growth and FormPublic
Page 311 of 959
Table of Contents

CHAPTER VII THE FORMS OF TISSUES OR CELL-AGGREGATES

Microscopic view of hexagonal cell structures forming a honeycomb-like pattern, from D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form.

cease. After equiôÙlibôÙrium is attained, and when the gelatinous mass is permitted to dry, we have an artificial tissue of more or less regularly hexagonal 〜cells,〝 which simulate in the closest way an organic parenchyma. And by varying the experiment, in ways which Leduc describes, we may simulate various forms of tissue, and produce cells with thick walls or with thin, cells in close contact or with wide intercellular spaces, cells with plane or with curved partitions, and so forth.

The hexagonal pattern is illustrated among organisms in countless cases, but those in which the pattern is perfectly regular, by reason of perfect uniformity of force and perfect equality of the individual cells, are not so numerous. The hexagonal epithelium-cells of the pigment layer of the eye, external to the retina, are a good example. Here we have a single layer of uniform cells, reposing on the one hand upon a basement membrane, supported

311