It follows therefore that there arc as many possible mechanisms as there are links in the chain.
The areas of intervening cortex, arriving at structural completion later than the above sense-spheres, are called by some association-spheres, to indicate the view that they contain the neural mechanisms of reactions (some have said "ideas") associated with the sense perceptions elaborated in the several sensese spheres.
In the Reiileaux system of analysis of mechanisms the principle of comparative motion is generalized, and mechanisms apparently very diverse in character are shown to be founded on the same sequence of elementary combinations forming a kinematic chain.
The Reuleaux system, therefore, consists essentially of the analysis of every mechanism into a kinematic chain, and since each link of the chain may be the fixed frame of a mechanism quite diverse mechanisms are found to be merely inversions of the same kinematic chain.
In the first place, the extremely small size and isolation of the vegetative cells place the protoplasmic contents in peculiarly favourable circumstances for action, and we may safely conclude that, weight for weight and molecule for molecule, the protoplasm of bacteria is brought into contact with the environment at far more points and over a far larger surface than is that of higher organisms, whether - as in plants - it is distributed in thin layers round the sap-vacuoles, or - as in animals - is bathed in fluids brought by special mechanisms to irrigate it.