SPLEEN OF MAMMALIA. 559 



many hypotheses, their comparison, by Kolliker, to the cells in 

 the sinuses of lymphatic ganglions, appearing to be most accept- 

 able. The 'lienine' is a soft mass, in colour passing from reddish- 

 brown to bright red on exposure to air, filling up all the interstices 

 between the larger partitions and vessels. It consists of fine 

 bloodvessels, lienine cells, delicate fibres or bands, and blood in 

 various states. The lienine cells, fig. 434, vary in size from 

 T^o tn to ToVo^h of a line, are pale in colour, with a dark 

 nucleus : with them are cells with smaller corpuscles, caudate 

 corpuscles, and free nuclei ; all exemplifying 434 



the size-limiting or shape-inducing property of a 

 the viscid materials, proteine and myeline, under < 

 the reaction of albumino-serous solution : falla- e 

 ciously suggesting the ( continuous process of 

 cell-growth by which new cells are formed 

 around nuclei, and old ones disappear ; ' l as also mag - 35 dlam - 

 the ( development of blood-discs within cells.' 2 The figures 433 

 and 434 merely exemplify some among the manifold forms under 

 which colloid elements aggregate in definite spaces, under such 

 influences as the spongy reservoir of the spleen affords. 



The splenic artery, especially when the ' pancreatica magna ' 

 and other branches to the pancreas are not called upon to supply 

 materials for the energetic and fitful action of that gland, must 

 pour more blood into the splenic reservoir than is needed for the 

 mere nutrition of the organ, and consequently the blood must 

 there undergo change. But the spleen receives too small a pro- 

 portion of the circulating mass to have any definite influence on 

 the manufacture or general condition of blood. Such changes as 

 are effected in the splenic locality more probably relate to the 

 functions of the gland to which the altered blood is exclusively 

 carried : and it is to be noted that the splenic vein is the largest 

 of the constituent channels of the portal one. 3 The most signifi- 

 cant fact in the Comparative Anatomy of the spleen is its corre- 

 lative development with the pancreas and its reception of blood 

 from the termination of the artery mainly supplying the pancreas 

 in its course to the spleen. 



1 ccvm". p. 781. 



2 Ib. p. 782, figs. 531, 532. These, and the figures 529, 530, represent nothing 

 specifically distinct from the results of formifaction under similar conditions in other 

 localities both in and out of the living body. 



3 The supply of the colouring matter of the bile from hrematin set free in the 

 spleen has been suggested. Extirpation of the spleen chiefly affects the biliary secre- 

 tion. The condition of the spleen in Hcematocrya negatives its being the seat of the 

 manufacture of blood-corpuscles. 



