Alex pulled the membrane from the foal's nose and stepped back.
Those organisms which possess the latter are a little higher in the scale of life than those which remain unclothed by it, but a comparison of the behaviour of the two quickly enables us to say that the membrane is of but secondary importance, and that for those which possess it, it is nothing more than a protective covering for the living substance.
HaberIandt has shown that in plant cells, when any new formation of membrane is to take place in a given spot, the nucleus is found in its immediate vicinity; and Klebs found that only that portion of the protoplasm of a cell which contains the nucleus is capable of forming a cell-wall; whilst Townsend has further shown that if the non-nucleated mass is connected by strands of protoplasm to the nucleated mass, either of the same cell or of a neighboring cell, it retains the power of forming a cell-membrane.
When the connecting string is held taut and sounds, such as those of ordinary speech, are produced in front of one of the membranes, pulses corresponding to the fluctuations of the atmospheric pressure are transmitted along the string and communicated to the other membrane, which in its turn communicates them to the air, thus reproducing the sound.
The use of the term to mean the individualized nucleated mass of living protoplasm, which, whether with or without a limiting membrane, primitively forms the proximate histological element of the body of every organism, dates from the second quarter of the i9th century.