THE LEUCOCYTES IN ORGANIC FUNCTIONS. 705 



valuable to counteract "the bright refraction of the granules" 

 which "blinds the eye to the presence of the threads" (our 

 canaliculi). The granules are stained opaquely in shades of 

 black and gray. He was thus able to ascertain that the gran- 

 ules varied greatly as to size, the smallest granules lying close 

 to the astrophere and the larger at the periphery, the arrange- 

 ment pointed out by Heidenhain and shown in Figs. 10, 12, and 

 16 of Gulland's plate. In the newt's blood, as already stated, 

 "these cells are markedly amoeboid, and have the habit of 

 throwing out circular pseudopodia, which are often connected 

 to the main part of the cell only by a very delicate thread." 

 Gulland illustrates this feature in Figs. 3 and 6 of his plate, 

 and states that "it is evident that the threads are often broken 

 through and the spherical portion of the cell-body set free, as 

 the blood contains a large number of them." He also refers 

 to the fact that, "when the eosinophile cells are found degen- 

 erated in blood or pus examined in the fresh state, the granules 

 are always in the Brownian movement." 



In our study of the granules of neutrophile cells we re- 

 ferred to the chemical analysis of Milroy and Malcolm and to 

 various points of dissimilarity between these cells and the 

 coarse oxyphiles now in question. Considered from the stand- 

 point of the latter, these investigations showed that, while 

 neither alcohol nor ether, nor both of these agents used suc- 

 cessively, produced alterations in either variety, the failure of 

 the latter process excluded the possibility of their consisting of 

 fat or lecithin. Weak alkaline solutions at about 120 C. caused 

 (a feature referred to by the authors as striking) the removal 

 of practically all the granules of the finely-granular cells (the 

 neutrophiles), and "persistence of two structures, the nuclei 

 and the coarse oxyphile granules." Acetic acid in alcoholic 

 solution and oxalic acid caused partial removal of both gran- 

 ules, but "sodium ethylate in alcoholic solution removed the 

 fine oxyphile granules almost completely and only affected the 

 coarse ones to a slight extent." 



The authors, while concluding that the granules might also 

 be nucleo-proteid in nature, i.e., similar to those of the neutro- 

 phile cells, account for the discrepancies in the results of their 

 analyses by the following argument: "The fact that weak acid 



