OF BLOOD BIOPLASTS. 



109 



nervous derangement possibly, giving rise, in the case 

 of man and the higher animals to slight pain, which 

 might soon pass off, or perhaps escape notice 

 altogether. 



These blood bioplasts possess formative power of a 

 very remarkable kind even in the adult. Not only 

 are they capable of producing fibrin, but they or 

 bioplasts directly descended from them, are capable of 

 forming fibrous tissue which resembles the ordinary 

 fibrous tissue developed in connection with several 

 textures of the body. But, more than this, these 

 bioplasts, poured out from the vessels suspended in 

 fluid exudation, or their descendants growing and 

 multiplying upon a surface wound of the skin or a 

 mucous membrane may produce cuticular cells or the 

 epithlial particles of a mucous membrane, not perhaps 

 quite so perfect and well formed as those developed 

 in situ, but nevertheless efficient as a protecting 

 covering. The varied power of forming tissue pos- 

 sessed by these bioplasts is perhaps due to the 

 circumstance that they have inherited formative powers 

 from the bioplasts of the germinal area at an early 

 period of development, for it must be remembered 

 that the ancestral white blood-corpuscles from which 

 all have directly descended, were developed at a time 

 anterior to that when the various bioplasts taking 

 part in the formation of the tissues diverged from 

 their common progenitor. So that formative power 

 of a more general character than is possessed by the 



