40 COMPOSITION OF WHITE CORPUSCLES. [BOOK i. 



more than 10 per cent. The transparent material of the cell body 

 must therefore be in a condition which we may call semifluid, or 

 semisolid, without being called upon to define what we exactly 

 mean by these terms. This approach to fluidity appears to be 

 connected with the great mobility of the cell body as shewn in its 

 amoeboid movements. 



29. When we submit to chemical examination a sufficient 

 mass of white corpuscles separated out from the blood by special 

 means and obtained tolerably free from red corpuscles and plasma 

 (or apply to the white blood corpuscles the chemical results 

 obtained from the more easily procured lymph corpuscles, which 

 as we shall see are very similar to and indeed in many ways 

 closely related to the white corpuscles of the blood), we find that 

 this small solid matter of the corpuscle consists largely of certain 

 proteids, or of substances more or less allied to proteids. Our 

 knowledge of these proteids and other substances is as yet im- 

 perfect, but we are probably justified in making the following 

 statement. 



There is present, in somewhat considerable quantity, a sub- 

 stance of a peculiar nature, which since it is confined to the 

 nuclei of the corpuscles and further seems to be present in all 

 nuclei, has been called nuclein. This nuclein, which though a 

 complex nitrogenous body is different in composition and nature 

 from proteids, is remarkable on the one hand for being a very 

 stable inert body, and on the other for containing a large quantity 

 (according to some observers nearly 10 p.c.) of phosphorus, which 

 appears to enter in a certain way into the structure of the mole- 

 cule, whereas in the case of proteids the phosphorus, which is not 

 always present, is, as it were, attached to the molecule. 



The substance however which is present in the greatest quan- 

 tity is one also at present not thoroughly understood, which 

 though it appears to exist in the cell body apart from the nucleus, 

 and indeed to form a large part of the solid matter of the cell 

 body, has since it seems to be a compound of nuclein and albumin 

 (or some other proteid) been called nudeo-albumin. It, like 

 nuclein, contains a considerable quantity of phosphorus, by which 

 as well as by other features it is distinguished from the globulins, 

 though in some respects it seems allied to that class of proteids, 

 and to a somewhat similar proteid, myosin, of which we shall have 

 to speak later on as a constituent of muscle. 



Besides these two bodies, the white corpuscles also contain a 

 globulin which, under the name of cell globulin, has been distin- 

 guished from the globulin or paraglobulin of blood, as well as a 

 body or bodies like to or identical with serum albumin. 



Next in importance to the proteids, as constant constituents of 

 the white corpuscles, come certain fats. Among these the most 

 conspicuous is the complex fatty body lecithin. 



In the case of many corpuscles at all events we have evidence 



