556 GENCHO FUJIMURA 



plastosomes, lipoid granules, and vacuoles. These constit- 

 uents, along Avith the functions of the cells, mutually show the 

 requisite correlation with which they are connected with one 

 another. Specifically: 



a. The plastosomes, though for the most part rod-shaped, 

 are either long or short, but occasionally they are granular, 

 chain-like, or filar in their shapes. Their quantity generally 

 more or less diminishes along with the progress of the secreting 

 functions. 



b. The lipoid granules are extremely varied in their shape, 

 quantity, and in color (in the stained preparations), according 

 to cell or the group to which the cell belongs or perhaps in ac- 

 cordance with the difference in the period of functions. In the 

 earliest stage of their appearance they are always granular- 

 shaped of extremely small size, and sometimes it is difficult to 

 distinguish them from the granular-shaped plastosomes ('plas- 

 tochondrin'), insomuch so that it suggests that the plasto- 

 somes may exist in a direct formative participation as matrix of the 

 lipoid granules. And this connection is most conspicuously 

 demonstrated in the Langhans' cells, the stroma cells of villi, 

 and in the decidual cells, and even in other cells it is quite 

 easy to recognize it, because the plastosomes tend to diminish 

 more or less in inverse proportion to the increase in the quan- 

 tity of the lipoids. 



c. The vacuoles are probably nothing but the lipoids 

 gradually liquefied and increased into what they are. And, with 

 the rise of functions, they keep increasing in numbers and, as 

 a higher degree of activity is attained, the vacuoles grow in 

 size, and part of them by degrees become agglutined with one 

 another, so that at last the cell body presents in its entirety a 

 highly foamy image, being composed of numberless vacuoles of 

 various sizes. 



The various cell groups mentioned above, if looked at from 

 their minute structure as well as the changes in the formative 

 components, which latter probably have an intimate connec- 

 tion with their functions, bear a close resemblance to the ordi- 

 nary classical glandular cells (pancreas, salivary and lacrimal 



