VI] 



OF MORPHOLOGICAL POLARITY 



285 



of chondriosomes), your Altmann's granules, your microsomes, 

 pseudo-chromosomes, epidermal fibrils and basal filaments, your 

 archeoplasm and ergastoplasm, and probably your idiozomes, 

 plasmosomes, and many other histological minutiae*. 



The position of these bodies with regard to the other cell- 

 structures is carefully described. Sometimes they lie in the 

 neighbourhood of the nucleus itself, that is to say in proximity to 

 the fluid boundary surface which separates the nucleus from the 

 cytoplasm ; and in this position they often form a somewhat cloudy 

 sphere which constitutes the Nebenkern. In the majority of cases, 

 as in the epithelial cells, they form filamentous structures, and rows 

 .of granules, whose main direction is parallel to the axis of the 



IfeiviSi 





A B C . 



Fig. 97. A, B, Cliondriosomes in kidney-cells, prior to and during secretory 

 activity (after Barratt); C, do. in pancreas of frog (after Mathews). 



cell, and which may, in some cases, and in some forms, be con- 

 spicuous at the one end, and in some cases at the other end of 

 the cell. But I do not find that the histologists attempt to explain, 

 or to correlate with other phenomena, the tendency of these bodies 

 to lie parallel with the axis, and perpendicular to the extremities 

 of the cell ; it is merely noted as a peculiarity, or a specific character, 

 of these particular structures. Extraordinarily complicated and 

 diverse functions have been ascribed to them. Engelmann's 

 '■ Fibrillenkonus," which was almost certainly another aspect of 

 the same phenomenon, was held by him and by cytologists like 

 Breda and Heidenhain, to be an apparatus connected in some 

 * Cf. A. Gurwitsch, Morphologic und Biologie der Zelle, 1904, pp. 169-185; 

 Meves, Die Chondriosomen als Trager erblicher Anlagen, Arch. f. mikrosk. Anat. 

 1908, p. 72; J. O. W. Barratt, Changes in Chondriosomes, etc. Q.J. M.S. LViii, 

 pp. 553-566, 1913, etc. ; A. Mathews, Changes in Structure of the Pancreas 

 Cell, etc., J. of Morph. xv (Suppl.), pp. 171-222, 1899. 



