THE PROTOPLASMA AND THE CELL. 



which we remarked above concerning the bathybius and 

 protamoeba, that constant mutability, that vital power of 

 contraction of the protoplasm. Numerous cells of our body, 

 as, for instance, the lymphoid cells (Fig. io, d), show the 

 same, and possess an " amoeboid" change of shape. 



When, by an artificial experiment, we produce an inflam- 

 mation of the eyeball of a frog, instead of the clear aqueous 

 of the normal condition, the contents of the anterior chamber 

 soon appear more cloudy. In this less transparent fluid, we 

 now meet with innumerable lymphoid cells which, in this case, 

 are called pus corpuscles. 

 If we subject these cells in a 

 conservative manner to micro- 

 scopical examination, we rec- 

 ognize the vital metamor- 

 phosis, already familiar to us, 

 of the protoplasm. Every 

 shape which our Fig. 15 pre- 

 sents — and innumerable oth- 

 ers also — may, one after the 

 other, be assumed by one and 

 the same cell, till finally, in 

 death, it comes to rest as a 

 spherical body (/). Formerly 

 only these corpses were 

 known. 



Still other remarkable things are connected with these pe- 

 culiarities of the protoplasm. 



If to this cloudy aqueous of the eye we add inoffensive col- 

 oring matters in a condition of the finest division, indigo or 

 carmine, for instance, we see that the always restless proto- 

 plasm gradually takes up into the cell body one colored gran- 

 ule after the other (b). Even larger structures may be thus 

 introduced. Fragments and even whole red blood corpuscles 

 may thus enter into the lymphoid cells of the spleen. The 

 amoeba (Fig. 3), received its small alimentary corpuscles in 

 exactly the same way. This introduction may take place, in 





Fig. 15. — Pus cells fiom the inflamed eye of 

 the frog ; a, to A\ the changes in the form of the 

 living cell ; /, dead cell. 



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