EFFECT OF OVER-ACTIVITY ON SYNAPSE 271 



(fig. 10) and fuchsin-light gi'een preparations I could also find 

 those vacuoles. Besides these I observed in the Mallory prepa- 

 rations dark violet or blue-stained granules in the cell protoplasm. 

 There is no doubt that these granules are identical with the 

 methyl-blue granules of Alzheuner (1). This kind of granules 

 varies considerab'y in size, but in any one cell they are in general 

 of similar size as Alzhemier described. With the production of 

 this kind of granule the loosening of the protoplasm structure of 

 the amoeboid glia cells takes place. In the acid-fuchsin-light 

 green preparations, in which the methyl-blue granules cannot be 

 bi*ought out, the cell body shows a granular or bubble-like ap- 

 pearance in this stage. At the same time marked changes be- 

 come noticeable in some nuclei; they are stained either homo- 

 geneously deeply or remarkably pale. Even the neuroglia cells 

 in the synapse, which are not in possession of the proper attributes 

 of an amoeboid glia cell, but have long narrow processes instead 

 of a large protoplasm mass, sometimes display alterations; then 

 the processes look as though they were dissolved into granules, 

 which show the same staining reaction as the methyl-blue 

 granules. 



In the acid-fuchsin-light green preparations (fig. 11) the amoe- 

 boid glia -cells were brought out very clearly; in the evenly 

 green-stained cell protoplasm the Alzheimer fuchsinophile gran- 

 ules appeared as large red spherules. The number of these gran- 

 ules varied in different cells; some large and old cells have gran- 

 ules scattered tlirough the whole protoplasm. The sizes of the 

 granules are almost equal and the considerable size distinguishes 

 these granules from the fine fuchsinophile granules, which are only 

 occasionally observable in the nonnal glia cells. As already re- 

 marked, I found also in this preparation vacuoles of different size 

 in the cell body of the amoeboid glia cells. The contents of these 

 vacuoles in my preparations were always clear; the large lipoid 

 cysts with yellow substance described by Alzheimer (1) did not 

 come to my observation. The Alzheimer light green granules 

 were not observed either in my preparations. 



In my thionih-eosin preparations (fig. 10) of formol-Zenker ma- 

 terial I found also a number of typical as well as atypical amoeboid 



THE JOURNAL CF COMPARATIVE NEUROLOGY, VOL. 30, NO. .3 



