CHAP. III.] CONNECTIVE TISSUE PROPER. 15 



muscles, the nerves, the blood-vessels, and other parts. It both 

 connects and insulates entire organs, and, in addition, performs 

 the same office for the finer parts of which these organs are made 

 up. It is thus one of the most general and most extensively 

 distributed of the tissues. It is, moreover, continuous through- 

 out the body, and from one region it may be traced without 

 interruption into any other, however distant, a fact not with- 

 out interest in practical medicine, seeing that in this way air, 

 water, and other fluids, effused into the areolar tissue may spread 

 far from the spot where they were first introduced or deposited. 



Areolar tissue, when its meshes are distended, appears to 

 be composed of a multitude of fine threads and films crossing 

 irregularly in every imaginable direction, leaving open spaces 

 or areoloB between them. Viewed with the microscope, these 

 threads and films are seen to be principally made up of wavy 

 bundles of exquisitely fine, transparent, white fibres, and these 

 bundles intersect in all directions. Mixed with the white fibres 

 are a certain number of elastic fibres, which do not form bun- 

 dles, and have a straight instead of a wavy outline. The 

 cells of the tissue, of which there 

 are several varieties, lie in the 

 spaces between the bundles of 

 fibres. 



On comparing the areolar tissue 

 of different parts, it is observed in 

 some to be more loose and open in 

 texture ; in others, more close and 

 dense ; and accordingly free move- 

 ment or firm connection between 

 parts is provided for. 



Fibrous tissue. Fibrous tissue is 

 intimately allied in structure to 

 the areolar tissue, but the bundles 

 of white fibres cohere very closely, 

 and instead of interlacing in every FlG n ._ FlBRO us TISSUE, FROM 



direction run for the most part in THE LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF A 

 ,. . 1,1 TENDON. (After Gegenbauer.) 



only one or two directions, and thus 



confer a distinctly fibrous aspect on the parts which they com- 

 pose. This fibrous tissue is met with in the form of ligaments, 

 connecting the bones together at the joints, and in the form of 



