of a cellular unit of living protoplasm. Accordingly, among other differences, the ãtransverseã or ãpericlinalã partitions, which were bound to appear at regular intervals and in definite positions, when co-equal bisection was a feature of the {391} case, are comparatively few and irregular in the earlier stages of Heterophyllia, though they begin to appear in numbers after the main, more or less radial, partitions have become numerous, and when accordingly these radiating partitions come to bound narrow and almost parallel-sided interspaces; then it is that the transverse or periclinal partitions begin to come in, and form what the student of the Coelenterata calls the ãdissepimentsã of the coral. We need go no further into the configuration and anatomy of the corals; but it seems to me beyond a doubt that the whole question of the complicated arrangement of septa and dissepiments throughout the group (including the curious vesicular or bubble-like tissue of the Cyathophyllidae and the general structural plan of the Tetracoralla,
such as Streptoplasma and its allies) is well worth inôÙvesôÙtiôÙgaôÙtion from the physical and mathôÙeôÙmatôÙiôÙcal point of view, after the fashion which is here slightly adumbrated.
The method of dividing a circular, or spherical, system into eight parts, equal as to their areas but unequal in their peripheral boundaries, is probably of wide biological application; that is to say, without necessarily supposing it to be rigorously followed, the typical configuration which it yields seems to recur again and again, with more or less approximation to precision, and under widely different circumstances. I am inclined to think, for instance, that the unequal division of the surface of a Ctenophore by its {392} meridian-like ciliated bands is a case in point (Fig. 175). Here, if we imagine each quadrant to be twice bisected by a curved anticline, we shall get what is apparently a close approximation to the actual position of the ciliated