CELLS OF CONNECTIVE TISSUE. 



231 



incut, are collected into smaller and larger groups or bundles (fig. 2 60), which are 

 separated from one another by septa of the white tissue, but the latter also penetrates 

 between the individual elastic fibres of the group. 



The cells or corpuscles of connective tissue. Three kinds of cells may 

 be distinguished in connective tissue, and these may provisionally be termed the 

 flattened or lamellar, the granular, and the vacuolated or plasma-cells. They are all 

 imbedded in the ground-substance, occupying the cell-spaces previously mentioned. 



The flattened or lamellar cells (fig. 262, c, c and fig. 267), are often applied to the 

 surfaces of the bundles of white fibres. Where three or more bundles come into 



Fig. 267. Two CONNECTIVE 



TISSUE CORPUSCLES FROM 

 THE SUBCUTANEOUS CONNEC- 

 TIVE TISSUE ; HIGHLY MAG- , 

 NIFIED. (E. A. S. ) 



The dark streak below I, 

 in the right hand corpuscle, 

 is a lamella which happens to 

 be projecting towards the ob- 

 server and is seen in optical 

 section. 



apposition, the cells may extend between the several bundles, and they then consist 

 of not one lamella, but of two, three, or more which fit in between the bundles, the 

 body of the cell occupying the larger interstice. This is most marked in fibrous 

 tissue, but is also seen in dense areolar tissue. The cells in some parts are united 



Fig. 268. RAMIFIED CONNECTIVE TISSUE CORPUSCLES. (E. A. S.) 250 DIAMETERS. 

 (From a preparation stained with chloride of gold. ) 



Fig. 269. EPITHELIOID AND RAMIFIED CELL-SPACES OF CONNECTIVE TISSUE. (E. A. S.) 



340 DIAMETERS. 



(From a preparation stained with nitrate of silver. ) 

 The nuclei of the cells are indicated. 



by their edges into patches, after the manner of an epithelium ; in other cases, a 

 union takes place by means of branching processes, so that the cells form a kind of 

 network throughout the ground-substance, and a corresponding network is of course 

 formed by the spaces in which the cells lie (figs. 268, 269). These flattened 

 connective tissue corpuscles are composed of clear cell-substance, with but a few 



