mollgaard's reticulum 333 



and at various intervals thereafter up to twenty-five liours post- 

 mortem. After this time no further preparations were made, for 

 it seemed quite evident that the networks were in some way 

 related to the process of freezing rather than to the length of 

 time after death. In this regard the author was entirely unable 

 to confirm Mollgaard's statement that the earliest form of the 

 reticulum (in nerve cells of tissue excised from the living animal) 

 consists of a network of 3 to 4 meshes, and that the reticulum 

 becomes finer and reaches its greatest development ten to twelve 

 minutes post-mortem. The reticula of nerve cells in smears 

 frozen and fixed thirty-two seconds after decapitation, and this 

 time probably does not correspond very unfavorably with the 

 time consumed by Mollgaard in excising and transferring the 

 tissue from the living animal, were found as fine and as extensive 

 as the reticula of cells in smears frozen and fixed at various later 

 intervals up to twenty-five hours after death. It seems appar- 

 ent, therefore, that very little, if any, connection exists between 

 the fineness and extensiveness of the reticulum on the one hand 

 and the time after death, up to at least twenty to twenty-four 

 hours, on the other. 



Neither was the author able to note any disintegration of the 

 reticulum in nerve cells of frozen smears left in 96 per cent alco- 

 hol for a time varying from half-an-hour to three days. Even 

 when Mollgaard's modification of his technique, as previously 

 explained under 'Material and technique,' was carefully followed 

 out, as nearly as the technique and conditions of the present 

 investigation would permit, no such changes as noted by Moll- 

 gaard were observed in the nerve cells of the smear preparation. 



Alterations in the staining properties of the protoplasm, as 

 observed by Mollgaard in frozen preparations made at various 

 intervals after death, were given but little attention because 

 smear preparations do not lend themselves readily to a reliable 

 study of such details. Furthermore, very much depends on the 

 thickness of the smear and its degree of differentiation after 

 staining. It may be noted however that in smears frozen twenty- 

 four to twenty-five hours after death there is a more diffuse 

 staining with the basic stain in consequence of which the blue and 



