62 STUDIES IN ADVANCED PHYSIOLOGY. 



disintegrated in the liver. Just in what manner we do not 

 know. In the spleen, too, there occur so-called blood-cor- 

 puscle-containing cells, that is, large white corpuscles which 

 seem to have eaten up decrepid corpuscles and to be in the 

 process of digesting them. Just how these cannibal cells 

 are able to single out worn-out corpuscles and leave normal 

 ones untouched is probably accounted for by the fact that 

 old corpuscles are sticky, and so remain attached, while 

 normal ones are carried on with the blood stream. 



THE WHITE OE COLORLESS CORPUSCLES. 



Much less numerous than the red are the white cor- 

 puscles of the blood. These corpuscles may be taken as 

 types of a living cell, possessing in some degree all the 

 properties that characterize ordinary one-celled animals. 

 As given before, the number of the white as compared with 

 that of the red is about one to three or four hundred. They 

 vary much in size, many of them are even smaller than 

 the red corpuscles, others differ but little from them, while 

 the larger ones measure from one and one-third times 

 to twice the size of the red. They possess no cell wall, but 

 seem composed throughout of a granular kind of prote- 



Fig. 14. FORMS OF A WHITK BLOOD CORPUSCLE SKETCHED AT INTERVALS DURING ITS 



AMCEBOID MOVEMENTS. 



a. Beginning of movement; b, formation of pseudopodia; c, the nucleus itself changes 

 its form; d, the corpuscle at last dead. 



