258 SPECIAL HISTOLOGY. 



whicb, however, it must not be forgotten that transitionary 

 forms between these two kinds of sacs exist. 



No one seems to have remarked upon the occurrence of 

 cartilage cells in the various textures which go to the con- 

 struction of the synovial sacs of the muscular system (except 

 in the fibro-cartilages of the tendons); and the more so, because 

 even Henle refers the fibro-cartilage of the tendinous sheaths 

 to his interarticular cartilages (bandscheiben). It is quite 

 true that the cartilage cells, while often occiuTing isolated in 

 the connective tissue, or more frequently only in certain spots 

 aggregated together, are not always readily seen ; they may, 

 however, be recognised in sufficiently thin sections, and very 

 distinctly on the addition of acetic acid. The cell-membranes 

 are not in this case utterly destroyed, any more than they 

 are in the cartilage cells of the interarticular ligaments, 

 &c, and no doubt can be entertained as to their being true 

 cartilage cells, which, almost without exception, exist, not as 

 a tissue, but rather dispersed in the connective tissue. Those 

 spots in which they exist in great quantity may be described 

 as fibro-cartilaginous places ; but the distinction between 

 these fibro-cartilages and those with true fibres, not of the 

 nature of cellular tissue {epiglottis, ossifying bones), must not 

 be lost sight of. Genuine cartilage, as on the cuboid bone, 

 I have never as yet met with in any other tendinous sheath ; 

 not even in the sulcus malleoli externi et interni; in the sulcus 

 of the heel ; nor in the sheath of the peronceus longus on the 

 calcaneum ; in which situations, cartilage cells are, indeed, 

 evervwhere to be seen, but onlv scattered in the connective 

 tissue. 



With respect to the rows of cells which are met with in 

 ligaments of the tendons, and in the tendinous sheaths, the 

 nuclei of which, after the disappearance of the cell, continue to 

 grow and arrange^ themselves together in the form of nuclear- 

 fibres, I cannot avoid remarking upon their close resemblance 

 to the more simple cartilage cells of the tendinous sheaths and 

 tendons, a resemblance so close, that I should almost be 

 inclined to indicate it as marking their identity, if it did not 

 sound altogether strange, to speak of a transition of the nuclei 

 of cartilage-cells into nuclear fibres. If not as identical, still 

 they may be regarded as analogous formations ; End the rather 



