24 FIBRES; CONNECTING TISSUE. 



nuated, and their nuclei, apparently from increasing 

 compression, have withered and mostly disappeared 

 entirely. Meanwhile these elongated cells, in contact 

 by their extremities, have grown together, and thus 

 become transformed into a continuous fibre. The 

 essential feature in this process, and that in which it 

 differs from the usual mode of development, consists 

 in the fact that there is no tendency observed in the 

 cell contents to break up into fibres, so that each row 

 of cells is eventually fused into but one solitary fibre, 

 and not into a bundle of fibrillse ; (PL IV. fig. IV. 3). 



In the other mode of development of connecting 

 tissue, which we had an opportunity of studying in a 

 fibrous tumor of the uterus, the formation of the fibre 

 seemed to be due to the metamorphosis of free nu- 

 clei. At certain points of the tumor an agglomeration 

 of oval, or spherical nuclei was observed, imbedded in 

 a soft amorphous substance (blastema).* The out- 

 lines of these nuclei were clear and well marked ; 

 their contents were composed of very fine granules, 

 in some instances so grouped as to represent a nucle- 

 olus. Very rarely an outline representing the trace 

 of a cell-wall could be recognised. They measured 

 about T i F th of a line in diameter. (PL IV. fig. V). 



At other points these nuclei were seen more elon- 

 gated in their shape, stretching themselves, as it were, 

 in the blastema in which they were imbedded, and 

 becoming connected together by their extremities so 

 as to form one fibre out of each row of elongated 



* This term, originally introduced by Schwann, signifies a soft, solid, 

 hyaline or amorphous materials-such as that in which cell growth usually 

 takes its origin. (Ed.) 



