44§ 



SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



There has been the usual controversy as to who first 

 saw these giant cells, but this much-debated question is 

 comparatively unimportant, and no one, I think, denies 

 that the Polish professor first demonstrated their function. 

 By injecting carmine or Indian ink into the bodies of As- 

 caris megalocephala and A. lumbricoides, waiting some hours 



Fig. 2. — Transverse section through a star-shaped body, part of the alimentary 

 canal and the skin of an Ascaris megalocephala. x. 85. From Nasonov. 



a. The intestines. 



b. The ridge of epidermis which surrounds the excretory vessel. 



c. The muscle-cell. 



d. The cuticle. 



e. The giant cell. 

 /. The nucleus. 



g. The fibrils of the giant cell. 



h. The minute cellules which surrounds it. 



and then investigating the parasites, he found that four 

 enormous cells with branching processes, almost invisible 

 under ordinary circumstances, had become so stained with 

 the foreign material as to be visible even through the skin 

 of the animal. (Fig. I. a.) 



