74 INTRODUCTION TO CYTOLOGY 



or group of fibrils lying at one side of the nucleus or entirely surrounding 

 it. Often it consists of a few scattered vacuole-like "Golgi bodies," 

 as in insect spermatocytes. In Protozoa the small, rather numerous 

 vacuoles react like Golgi material (Hall et al.). Although the largest 

 and most complex forms are found in vertebrates (spinal ganglion cells) 

 while the simpler non-reticulate forms prevail in invertebrates, there is 

 no constant correlation between form and taxonomic grouping. Further- 

 more, within some groups the form in different types of tissue is com- 

 paratively uniform, whereas in other groups it shows great diversity. 

 The appearances presented are nevertheless rather characteristic in 

 different cell types and in different stages of development: the "appara- 

 tus" is large in gland cells and small in muscle cells; it is well developed 

 in active stages of differentiation and becomes less conspicuous as the 

 cell ages. In pathological or physiologically abnormal tissues it often 

 shows marked alterations, the significance of which is not understood.^ 



It has proved very difficult to investigate the Golgi material in living 

 cells^ because of its low visibility. It is best seen in spermatocytes. 

 The blackened images observed after impregnation with silver (Cajal, 

 Golgi, Da Fano) or prolonged immersion in osmic acid (Kopsch, Kolat- 

 chev) create false impressions regarding the nature of the material in 

 the living state; the clear canals appearing after other treatments (for- 

 malin and potassium bichromate) are somewhat better. In the living 

 cell the Golgi material seems to be a fluid which is physically rather 

 similar to the rest of the cytoplasm. Its solubility in alcohol and reac- 

 tions to osmic acid and other reagents suggest the presence of some 

 lipide.* The fact that impregnated globules or strands of Golgi material 

 often show chromophilic and chromophobic portions suggests that two 

 main components are present, though not necessarily with the arrange- 

 ment they show in the preparations. Different treatments often result 

 in very different images according to the way in which the components 

 are affected. This has led to the view that in the Golgi material we 

 have to deal with a formless fluid rather than an individualized organ. 

 However, we shall point out farther on that the material in question has 

 come to be regarded by some workers as one component of a specialized 

 cytoplasmic region where a definite function is being performed. 



Behavior in Cell-division. — The Golgi material is apportioned with 

 various degrees of regularity between the daughter cells at the time of 

 cell-division. In the spermatocytes of a snail, Paludina vivipara, 

 Perroncito (1909, 1910) observed the fragmentation of the Golgi network 



2 Cowdry (1924a) lists the alterations reported by many observers. 



3 Gatenby (1920), Nath and Nangia (1931), Murray (1898), Brambell and Rau 

 (1925), Karpova (1925), Avel (1925). See Zweibaum and Elkner (1926) and Ludford 

 (1927) on tissue cultures. Chambers does not detect it in his microdissection studies. 



^ Weigl (1910, 1912), Nussbaum (1913), Gatenby (1920), W. Ma (19286), Ma and 

 Chang (1928), Ma, Chang, and Liu (1929). 



