ON SOME PROTEIN CRYSTALLOIDS. 117 



to me that these bodies were protein-crystalloids. Proceeding to 

 test them I found — 



They have a higher refractive index than the cytoplasm. 



Iodine colours them darkly. 



By Zimmermann's method of staining they were well shown, 

 but not unless the sections were of a thickness of at least 7 fi, 

 which is a disadvantage for minute cytological work. 



The hairs in which the crystalloid bodies occur are extremely 

 numerous immediately above the uppermost ovules, and are more 

 sparsely distributed on the lower portion of the placenta. 



1 have studied them from the time when they are first differ- 

 entiated from the- surrounding epidermal cells, till the withering of 

 the flower, when they degenerate. In young ovaries (about three 

 jnillemeires in length, including the pistil), the upper ovules of 

 which show four nuclei in the embryo-sac, the hairs are only 

 slightly larger than the other epidermal cells (Fig. i, a), and are not 

 specially rich in cell protoplasm, although the nucleus stains 

 deeply. 



In ovaries five millemetres long, at the time when the embryo- 

 sac first contains eight nuclei, the hairs have elongated greatly and 

 are remarkably rich in protoplasm, and in nuclear chromatin, and, 

 with few exceptions, each hair possesses several (2 — 6) nucleoli 

 (Figs. 2 and 3). At this period any appearance of erythrophilous 

 bodies outside the nucleus is extremely rare. A few hair-cells may 

 have undergone division ; but, as a rule, they continue to be uni- 

 cellular throughout life. Dumb-bell shaped nuclei (Fig. 3) are 

 very common, both at this period and later. I examined 50 cells 

 of this stage, making careful drawings of each serial section, and 

 found that there were as follows : — 



Hairs with three to six nucleoli ... 14 



Hairs wifh two nucleoli ... ... 24 



Hairs with one nucleolus ... ... 12 



Only two cells of the total number contained crystalloids or 

 granules ; and these occurred in the lower, better nourished, and 

 therefore more mature part of the ovary. One of them had one 

 nucleolus ; and the other contained two. 



On the examination of the ovary of a bud about seven jnille- 

 metres lo?ig, numbers of erythrophilous granules and slender 



