380 PROFESSOR ARTHUR BOETTCHER. 



and a granular mass in the interior. The latter is more darkly 

 stained by carmine and eosine (fig. 2). 



The blood-corpuscles belonging to this group are usually 

 collected together in heaps, or rather spread out side by side in 

 a thin layer. They are mostly spindle-shaped, all possible varie- 

 ties being represented, both long and narrow and short and wide 

 (a, h, c, dy e,f). At first sight these blood-corpuscles remind 

 one of many cell-forms from the embryonic connectire tissue ; 

 any one, therefore, seeing them for the first time would not 

 easily imagine that he had red blood-corpuscles before him, so 

 different is their appearance to that usually presented by these 

 structures. 



The adhesion of these corpuscles to one another is explained 

 by their being held together by traces of coagulated plasma or 

 serum, according to whether fresh or defibrinated blood has been 

 used for the experiment, and their inclusion in a coagulating 

 mass may not be without its influence on the formation of the 

 spindle shape. A greater influence on the formation of this 

 shape is probably due to the fact that, at the moment when the 

 solution of corrosive sublimate acted on the blood-corpuscles, 

 they were stretched by violent agitation of the fluid. I know of 

 no other reason why these blood-corpuscles, whilst only an ex- 

 tremely small quantity of coagulated albumen lies between them, 

 should nearly always all of them appear extended into spindles 

 in one and the same direction. 



Besides these spindle-shaped corpuscles, more rarely elliptical 

 and spherical blood-corpuscles {h) are seen, in which two con- 

 stituent parts can also be distinguished. 



The form of the central granular mass usually adopts itself 

 to the shape of the whole corpuscle (fj, i.e. in the long spindle 

 shapes it is found much elongated (a b), and in the globular 

 blood-corpuscles collected into a ball {h). This is, however, often 

 not the case, but the granular substance appears contracted in 

 the centre of an elongated blood-corpuscle (<?). Once I found 

 it denuded and projecting from the cortical layer on one side of 

 the spindle [g). 



If now in all these blood-corpuscles two substances can be 

 distinguished, a homogeneous cortical layer, and a granular 

 substance enclosed within it, it is natural to look upon the latter, 

 in the cases in which it has a circular or oval outline, as the 

 nucleus of the blood-corpuscles {d, e, g, h). But the relations 

 to be immediately mentioned permit of a farther distinction, 

 which causes their structure to appear in a different light. The 

 circumstance alone that the central granular mass frequently 

 constitutes a comparatively large part of the red blood- corpuscles, 

 is sufficient to lead to the supposition that it does not consist of 



