

CONNECTIVE TISSUE. 



167 



In old animals, the loose interfascicular connective tissue is sometimes 

 found freely supplied with elastic fibers. As Treitz and Kolliker have shown, 

 the tendons attached to smooth muscle bundles are composed mainly of elas- 

 tic fibers. L. Ranvier discovered at the periphery of the bundles of tendon 

 flat "cell-plates," arranged in rows, exhibiting elastic ridges, either single or 

 in numbers up to five. His method of examination of tendon is teasing and 

 pulling, and he pulled from preference rats' tails, in order to obtain the broken, 

 fringy ends of the delicate tendons along the vertebral column. After he had 

 pulled and severed the tendons, he transferred the fringe to the glass slide, 

 and, in order to prevent it from shrinking, sealed it at both ends to the slide. 

 Although this method is not very inviting, pulling rat-tails became quite fash- 

 ionable in the laboratories in Europe a number of years ago. Ranvier denies 

 the existence of cell-formations in the tendon other than the endothelial 

 plates. Perhaps these are flat, endothelial investments of the larger bundles 



FIG. 61. TENDON OF ACHILLES OF A YOUNG PERSON. 

 SECTION. CHROMIC ACID SPECIMEN. 



TRANSVERSE 



B, bundles finely dotted ; C, tendon-corpuscle with offshoots, connecting with the inter- 

 lascicular tissue, IT,- the latter contains the capillary blood-vessels, BV. Magnified 500 

 diameters. 



similar to the investing sheath of Boll, unquestionably present around the 

 periphery of the tendon. Lowe has maintained that such an investment is 

 also found around the bundles of the tendon, but he has been contradicted 

 by other observers. The elastic ridges are probably the place of attachment 

 of neighboring bundles. 



One of the greatest difficulties encountered by former observ- 

 ers was to explain satisfactorily the wing-like offshoots of the 



