As far back as 1850, Cohn wrote, apparently without any knowledge of what Payen had said before him: "The protoplasm of the botanist, and the contractile substance and sarcode of the zoologist, must be, if not identical, yet in a high degree analogous substances.

Hence, from this point of view, the difference between animals and plants consists in this; that, in the latter, the contractile substance, as a primordial utricle, is enclosed within an inert cellulose membrane, which permits it only to exhibit an internal motion, expressed by the phenomena of rotation and circulation, while, in the former, it is not so enclosed.

The protoplasm in the form of the primordial utricle is, as it were, the animal element in the plant, but which is imprisoned, and only becomes free in the animal; or, to strip off the metaphor which obscures simple thought, the energy of organic vitality which is manifested in movement is especially exhibited by a nitrogenous contractile substance, which in plants is limited and fettered by an inert membrane, in animals not so.

Thus it must be admitted that plants may be contractile and locomotive; that, while locomotive, their movements may have as much appearance of spontaneity as those of the lowest animals; and that many exhibit actions, comparable to those which are brought about by the agency of a nervous system in animals.

Such a structure is of common occurrence among the lowest plants and animals, and is known as a contractile vacuole.

Of the four monads described and figured by these investigators, one, as I have said, very closely resembles Heteromita lens in every particular, except that it has a separately distinguishable central particle or "nucleus," which is not certainly to be made out in Heteromita lens; and that nothing is said by Messrs. Dallinger and Drysdale of the existence of a contractile vacuole in this monad, though they describe it in another.

Close to the origin of these cilia, in the substance of the body, is a regularly pulsating, contractile vacuole.

The body consists of a soft granular protoplasmic substance, the middle of which is occupied by a large oval mass called the "nucleus"; while, at its hinder end, is a "contractile vacuole," conspicuous by its regular rhythmic appearances and disappearances.

There are two contractile vacuoles, from each of which radiates a system of vessel-like canals; and not only is there a conical depression continuous with a tube, which serve as mouth and gullet, but the food ingested takes a definite course, and refuse is rejected from a definite region.

In general, it controls the tone of the tissues, of involuntary or smooth muscle fibres of the blood vessels and the contractile organs of the body like the intestines, the bladder and uterus.

Muscles are highly elastic as well as contractile.

It has by no means lost its contractile power, for if we apply a strong electric stimulus to it, the fatigue seems to disappear.

"An alcoholic heart loses its contractile and resisting power, both through morbid changes in its nerve ganglia and in its muscle fibers.

'If the habitual use of alcohol causes the loss of contractile and resisting power by impairment of both the nerve ganglia and muscle fibers of the heart, how can it act as a heart tonic?'"Dr.

The membrane which surrounds the contractile substance of a striped muscular fiber.

Obs.]; contractile; compressible; smaller &c (small) &c 193.

He recognizes the universal gravitating or contractile force, from which, as successive sequences, proceed heat and expansion; but he does not suggest that spirit has any more to do with the first than with any succeeding term in the series.

Before the godlike countenance of man appeared on the earth, with its contractile forehead and erectile eyebrows, the answering light of the eye, the expansive nostrils, and subtilely mobile lips; before that the tail was the prime vehicle of emotion and safety-valve of passion.

First comes desire as the contractile, tart quality or pain, from which proceed hardness and heat; next comes mobility as the expansive, sweet quality, as this shows itself in water.