STEUCTUEE OF COLOEED BLOOD-COBPUSCLES. 73 



A drop of fresh ox-blood, mixed with a 50 per cent, saturated solution of 

 bichromate of potash, and highly magnified (Tolles's j^ immersion) exhibited, 

 within twenty minutes, vacuolation beginning in several red corpuscles. 

 Within forty minutes, knobs were protruded, though not copiously. In the 

 course of an hour, " paling " proceeded regularly, so that the net-work became 

 visible in some, and within two hours in a large number, of the corpuscles. 

 After three hours the net-work, the note-book says, was very distinct in 

 many corpuscles, with some detritus and a few " ghosts." Twelve hours 

 later, about one-half of the whole number of corpuscles showed the reticulum, 

 while the other half were either vacuoled or unchanged. No further change 

 was observable for two days. After the third day, some few corpuscles, per- 

 haps, that had not shown the net-work structure before, now did; but the 

 paled ones had become too pale to do so, except a very few which showed it 

 finally. The rest had become " ghosts," with much detritus. A week later, 

 nearly all the corpuscles that had exhibited the net-work had become 

 " ghosts," only in a very few of which faint traces of the reticulum could 

 be made out. The rest were still unchanged, as on the first day, and remained 

 so as long as the specimen was kept. 



The red blood-corpuscles of the newt, examined in a 50 per 

 cent, saturated solution of bichromate of potash, into which a 

 drop of the blood from the freshly cut tail had been allowed to 

 fall, presented peculiar changes of shape, consisting mainly in 

 contractions of the body around the nucleus. 



The nuclei always exhibited the net-work structure, either 

 perfect, and more distinct than in specimens unmixed with the 

 solution, or, when the nucleus was swelled to double or treble its 

 original size, with the net-work torn. Just as in the case of the 

 colorless corpuscles, there were seen two kinds of red corpuscles, 

 finely granulated and coarse granular, the granules always being 

 the points of intersection of the threads of the net-work. In 

 both kinds, the body as well as the nucleus exhibited the reticu- 

 lum structure. The net- work of the body and that of the nucleus 

 were connected by fine threads passing through the nuclear 

 envelope. In many instances the body was reduced, either to two 

 polar flaps, bulging from each side of the nucleus, or to one flap, 

 more or less colored, at the side of the nucleus ; in other instances, 

 it was uniformly contracted around the enlarged nucleus. 



Many colored corpuscles contained vacuoles, in varying num- 

 ber, which were either empty or traversed by an exceedingly 

 delicate, apparently stretched, reticulum, or else contained irreg- 

 ular accumulations of matter with remnants of the net- work. 



n. 



My observations as to amoeboid movements of colored blood- 

 corpuscles, as well as to varieties of size and shape, observations 



