722 INTERNAL SECRETIONS AND PRESERVATION OF LIFE. 



into them, and not between them." Foster also refers to this 

 feature in the following quotations: "It has, it is true, been 

 maintained by some that they [the neutral fats] pass between 

 the cells, and not into them, but the evidence is distinctly 

 against this view." Alluding to the rods of the striated border, 

 he says: "We may imagine that the globules pass into the cell- 

 substance by help, in some way, of these rods through amoeboid 

 movements comparable with the ingestive movements of the 

 body of an amoeba; but we have no positive evidence to support 

 this view." . . . "Within the columnar cell, the fat may 

 be seen, both in osmic-acid preparations and in fresh living 

 cells, to be disposed in globules of various sizes, some large and 

 some small, each globule placed in a space of the protoplasmic 

 cell-substance. It does not follow that the fat actually entered 

 the cell exactly in the form of these globules; it may be that 

 the fat passes the striated border in very minute spherules, 

 which, reaching the body of the cell, run together into larger 

 globules; but whether this is so or not we do not know." 



All this seems to pointedly suggest that the epithelial cells 

 take up minute fat-particles to submit them to some local proc- 

 ess. Bohm and von Davidoff 61 emphasize the feature of the 

 process when they say, referring to the fat-globules in the 

 epithelial cells: "It seemed most probable that protoplasmic 

 threads (pseudopodia) were thrown out from each through its 

 cuticular zone, which, after taking up the fat, withdrew with it 

 again into the cell. But when it was shown that, after feeding 

 with fatty acids or soaps, globules of fats still appeared in the 

 epithelial cells as before, and that the chyle also contained fat, 

 the hypothesis was suggested that the fat is split up by the 

 pancreatic juice into glycerin and fatty acids, and that the 

 fatty acids are then dissolved by the bile and the alkalies of 

 the intestinal juice only again to combine with the glycerin to 

 form fat within the epithelial cells." Stewart further states 

 that "when an animal is fed with fatty acids they are not only 

 absorbed, but appear as neutral fats in the chyle of the thoracic 

 duct, having combined with glycerin in the intestinal wall, 

 and the epithelial cells contain globules of fat, just as they 



80 All italics below this word are our own. 



81 Bohm and von Davidoff : Loc. cit., p. 256. 



