Chap. Ill,] 



ADIPOSE TISSUE. 



17 



one kind of fibre to the other, that gives them their different 

 characteristics : the interlacing of the wavy bundles of finest 

 fibres, giving us the delicate web-like areolar tissue ; the close 

 packing of these bundles, giving us the dense opaque fibrous 

 membranes and bands; and the preponderance of the elastic 

 fibres, furnishing the extensile elastic tissue. 



This connective tissue proper, as we have already noted, is 

 used for purely mechanical purposes : forming inextensile bands 

 or pulleys ; strong protective membranes ; web-like, binding, and 

 supporting material; sheaths of varying degrees of density; 

 elastic bands or membranes ; and it also serves to carry the 

 blood-vessels, lymphatics, and nerves to the parts which it 

 connects and covers. 



Adipose tissue. — When fat first begins to be formed in the 

 embryo, it is deposited in tiny droplets in some of the cells 



Fin. 12. — A Few Fat-Cells from the Margin of a Fat-Lobule. Very 

 highly magnified, f.g. fat-globules distending a fat-cell ; n, nucleus; m, membran- 

 ous envelope of the fat-cell; c, capillary vessel; v, veinlet; c.t. connective-tissue 

 cell ; the fibres of the connective tissue are not shown. 



of the areolar connective tissue ; these droplets increase in size, 

 and eventually run together so as to form one large drop 

 in each cell. By further deposition of fat the cell becomes 

 swollen out to a size far beyond that which it possessed orig 

 inally until the protoplasm remains as a delicate envelope sur- 



