THE MICROSCOPE. 59 



"One sees the truth through this tube so tall," 



Said the mite as. he squinted through it; 

 "Man is not so wonderously big after all, 

 If the mite world only knew it." 



MORAL. 



Whether a thing is large or small, 



Depends on the way you view it. 



— Chadbourne s Scientific Annul. 



A New Blood-Corpuscle. — According to Bizzozero, if the 

 circulating blood in the small vessels of the mesentery of chloralized 

 rabbits or guinea-pigs is observed under a high power, there will be 

 seen besides the ordinary red and white cells, a third form of cor- 

 puscle, which is colorless, round or oval, and from one-half to one- 

 third the size of the red corpuscle. Bizzozero says that it is owing 

 (i) to their want of color and translucency, that they have hitherto 

 escaped the notice of observers. (2) They are less numerous than 

 the red and less visible than the white corpuscle. (3) Owing to 

 the great difficulty of observing the circulating blood in the small 

 vessels of the warm-blooded animals. They can be seen also in 

 freshly-drawn blood, for the most part aggregated around the white 

 corpuscles, or immediately under the cover-glass to which they 

 adhere. They soon become granular, and give rise to what is 

 called the granule masses. Through appropriate reagents, their 

 form can be preserved. A solution of salt colored with methyl- 

 violet has this property. The best method of examining them in 

 the human subject, is to place a drop of the above colored solution 

 over the puncture and mixing the drop of blood thoroughly with 

 it. Owing to their typical forms, it is very unlikely they are derived 

 from the red corpuscles. 



The colorless corpuscles contain no ingredients from which 

 they could be derived. After bleeding, and in many diseased con- 

 ditions, they are increased in number. They play an important 

 part in the formation of thrombi and the coagulation of the blood. 

 They form the principal part of white clots in mammalia. It is 

 probable that they play the role in the coagulation of the blood 

 which has heen attributed by Mantegazza and Schmidt to the white 

 corpuscles, because the latter are few in number in the circulating 



