44 
We have then three distinct states of matter in the blood: 
1st.—Food substance or formative material, such as the fluid 
albumen. 
2nd.—Living substance, or formative material which has been 
endowed with actual life, such as the corpuscle immediately under 
our notice, and : 
3rd.—Formed substance, the final result of vital operation, 
only to be obtained therefrom, but not itself alive. It seems to 
be a law that food substance can only become formed substance 
by going through the process of being living substance. 
Taking one of our colourless corpuscles, we find that being 
living substance, it is busily engaged in the production. of formed 
substance from the food substance around it. Some of this formed 
substance, as the fibrin perhaps, is thrown off into the general 
current of the blood, but in other instances it is merely thrown as 
far as the outside of the corpuscle and there forms a film all round 
it: in other words the little living body has enclosed itself in a cell ; 
but when the cell is formed, and formed completely, all further food 
for the inhabitant must be drawn in through the pores of the cell 
wall and, after having satisfied the growth of the inmate, is used 
as more formed substance in thickening the cell-wall from the inside, 
strengthening and modifying its character. And all the various 
parts of the body are made in this way, a number of the finished 
cells being fixed together in a mass which is threaded by channels 
for the purpose of supplying fresh food to the innermost workers, 
until, as each cell-wall becomes more and more perfect and 
developed, the living germ within becomes less and less, and at last 
the cell is fully formed in a fit character for its position, but it is 
no longer alive. 
While the colourless corpuscle is engaged in the process of 
multiplication by splitting, as it does, into families of young ones, 
it does not clothe itself with formed substance ; it only does so 
towards the end of its life when it goes into the building trade, as 
seen before. 
The colowred corpuscles are more of the nature of cells from 
the very first, and are most probably a variety of the young coloured 
corpuscle; but the question of their early relationship is still 
undecided. It is thought by some that a nucleus in the colourless 
corpuscle developes into the coloured race, and by others that the 
red globule is as a porous mass of ‘‘ formed substance,” containing 
in its pores coloured living pulp. 
Globules of oil are also found in the serum ready to keep up 
the combustion necessary to maintain the animal heat: these are 
derived from the fat contained in the flesh eaten. . 
