THE JOTJENAL 



OF THE 



^ntlutt Ulia'osfopical Club. 



Striped Muscle Fibre of Pig. 

 By E. M. Nelsox, F.R.M.S. 

 Plate II, fig. 5. 

 (Taken as read, Novemler 20th, 1S91.J 



When micro-^copists became possessed of a new and more 

 powerful eye by the advent of apoehromatics, among other 

 things, I examined striped muscle fibre, and immediately saw 

 several new stripes in the darker portion which lies between 

 the well-known stripes of Huxley and Busk, or Kj.'ause's mem- 

 brane. These were described by me at the R.M.S., Xovember, 

 1887. Since that time my previous records have been confirmed 

 by examination with monochromatic light, and the fibre has also 

 been successfully photographed; the excellent drawing from 

 which the figure was engraved was kindly made by Mr. G. C. 

 Karop, from one of the photographs. 



First, my opinion is that, if anything is to be done towards 

 the elucidation of minute histological structures, we must 

 attack them precisely as if they were diatoms > There should 

 not be such a thing as one way of examining a histological 

 specimen, and another way of examining a diatom ; but there 

 is a right and a wrong way of using the microscope, and the 

 right way is the diatom method, and is the one which should 

 be employed on histological tissues. 



I would, therefore, most earnestly enjoin all microscopists 

 who wish to explore more minute and still unknown regions of 

 histology, to pay not the slightest heed to Abbe's paper on the 

 wide-angled cone of illumination, but to work away at even 

 difficult and most unpromising structures with the wide-angled 

 cone. What more unpromising structure could you have than 

 that under present discussion, viz., an exquisitely thin and very 

 transparent substance in a fluid of nearly its own refi^active 

 index ? It should also be remembered that, after a battle of 



JouRN. Q. M. C, Series II., No. 31. 1 



