14 ART. 5. — N. YATSU : 



enclosed in the cavity (PI. I., Fig. 14). As the first step of trans- 

 formation the blood corpuscles become spherical : the cytoplasm 

 shows a granular appearance, and the nucleus is pushed aside until 

 it lies just inside the cell-membrane (PI. I., Fig. 15). Then 

 the nucleus seems to undergo degeneration though I was not able 

 to obtain sections favorable for studying the karyolysis, and the 

 granular cytoplasm changes into a very compact homogeneous 

 and strongly refractive sphere. This I shall call the compact 

 body (c. p.). Such bodies occur, in a tolerably large number, 

 constantly imbedded directly in the epithelial ridge and the 

 dendritic organ (PI. I., Figs. 10, 13). They take a darker 

 erythrosin stain than the spindle bodies and in all their behavior 

 toward stains the compact bodies show no difference from the 

 blood corpuscles. The bodies vary greatly in size (PL I., Fig. 

 13) although the blood corpuscles are of an uniform size. In 

 what way such differences in size arise I do not understand : 

 they may perhaps be caused by the fact that different portions 

 of cytoplasm are used for the formation of the compact bodies. 

 Sometimes, but not always, the compact bodies then undergo 

 eccentric splittings, as the result of which a sickle-like space is 

 left between the two portions in the section (PI. L, Figs. 17 a, b). 

 Sometimes a small spherical portion is formed near the periphery 

 and this acts as the centre of splitting (PI. I., Fig. 16). Next 

 the fibres are formed at the expense of the compact metamor- 

 phosed cytoplasm ; at this time an enormous growth in length 

 certainly takes place, as the fibres are not found coiled up from 

 the outset of their formation. From each portion of the compact 

 body thus split, a bundle of fibres is formed. Consequently all 

 imaginable forms of spindle bodies are produced according to the 

 degree and mode of splitting. In some cases I found spindle 



