L ] 'MP HOW OR GA NS. 



121 



sents a reticulum with very narrow meshes, in the interspaces 

 of which one, or, at the most, a few lymphoid cells find 

 place; and let us not forget that the pulp-tubes possess, su- 

 perficially, the same reticular character, covered by an en- 

 dothelium consisting of separate, uncemented cells. 



Fig. 113. — From the spleen of the hedgehog ; a, pulp, with the intermediate currents ; h, fol- 

 licle ; c, boundary layer of the same : g, its capillaries ; e, transition of the same into the interme- 

 diate pulp-current ; f, transverse section of an arterial branch, at the border of the Malpighian 

 corpuscles. 



If we adhere to this previously described textural condi- 

 tion, the lacunar capillary blood current, which arises after 

 the loss of the capillary walls, will present no further con- 

 siderable difficulty. As the failing branch of a drying brook 

 wanders at last between the pebbles of its bed, slender and 

 scanty, so is it with these finest blood currents. The lym- 

 phoid cells resemble the pebbles. 



Still, the blood current contains cellular elements and the 

 red blood corpuscles in excess. A portion of the latter 

 slip through with their pliable, smooth surface ; others stick 

 fast. 



For our colored elements, however, as we have already 

 learned, movement is life, rest is death. Thus are explained 

 those numerous corpses and fragments of the colored blood 

 cells in the spleen, which we mentioned above (p. 119). 



Something additional is also satisfactorily explained by 

 this. The closely crowded amoeboid lymph cells are capable 

 of taking up into themselves the imprisoned blood corpuscle 

 6 



