802 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [10] 



ing which time they exhibited the most surprising activity of movement, 

 at times even becoming confluent with one another. 



The corpuscles which have been most deeply tmged appear to have 

 lost their amoebal dispositions, and in this condition they tend to lodge 

 in the numerous interstices between the i^rominent muscular trabeculse 

 found in the ventricle of the oyster. In a few instances I have found 

 large cysts lying just below and covered by the epithelium of the mantle, 

 which were packed full of these green-colored blood cells, which had 

 apr)arently been accumulated in and been the cause of the formation of 

 these cysts. When the cysts were cut open the corj)uscles would very 

 quickly escajje, often in very feebly resistant masses, but which, upon 

 shaking in a watch glass, would at once separate into distinct corpus- 

 cular bodies, each of which was provided with a nucleus. These cor- 

 puscles differed in no resx)ect morphologically from a normal blood cell 

 of the oyster, except in color. 



The heart in oysters which are deeply tinged with green is often af- 

 fected in its ventricular portion, where the deposit of corpuscles in the 

 chinks between the trabeculse of the ventricle and over the inner walls 

 of the latter may be as much as a sixteenth of an inch in thickness. This 

 thick deposit of green corpuscles gives to the normally somewhat trans- 

 lucent ventricle a delicate pea-green color. This condition of affairs 

 may sometimes be well seen in sections of the heart of a green oyster, 

 where the stratum of abnormal cells is thus shown to be present as a 

 thick adherent layer covering the whole of the internal parietes of the 

 ventricle, which even extends down behind the upwardly directed lips 

 of the auriculo-ventricular valves, so as i^ossibly to some extent impede 

 their free action. Occasionally an impoverished green oyster may be 

 found, the vessels of which exhibit this coloring faintly in their courses 

 through the mantle. 



The nature of this coloring matter seems to have been very satisfac- 

 torily determined by M. Puysdgur, who concludes, as we have seen, 

 that it is neither chlorophyll nor diatomine, though he does not seem 

 to have resorted to si^ectroscopic analysis and has relied entirely upon 

 other physical tests, mainly such as would determine its solubility in vari- 

 ous menstrua. He shows that it is some specific coloring matter which, 

 unlike chlorophyll, is soluble in water. I would here suggest that it is 

 probably a peculiar form of chlorophyll, allied to what is known asphyco- 

 cyanin, which is found in certain simple algte, known to botanists as the 

 Gyanopliycece^ which embrace five subdivisions, viz, Chroococcecv, Nostoca- 

 cew, Oscillator iece, Eivulariece, and Scytonemece, according to Sachs, who 

 says: " These organisms are of a bluish, emerald, or brownish green, or 

 some similar color due to a mixture of true chlorophyll and phycocyanin; 

 this pigment becomes diffused out of dead or ruptured cells, and thus 

 produces the blue stain on the paper on which Oscillatot iece are dried. 

 From crushed siiecimens treated with cold water phycocyanin is ex- 

 tracted as a beautiful blue solution, blood red in reflected light (Cien- 



