168 CONNECTIVE TISSUE. 



tendon corpuscles seen in transverse sections, as no trace of such 

 formations is visible in longitudinal sections. This difficulty was 

 overcome by the discovery of offshoots of the tendon corpuscles, 

 brought into view in longitudinal sections by the silver and 

 gold staining. The minutest features in the structure of the 

 tendon are described on page 122, and illustrated in Fig. 37 and 

 Fig. 38. 



The articular ligaments are formations closely allied to ten- 

 don ; between their bundles, however, a greater amount of loose 

 connective tissue is found than in the tendon. 



(d) Dense Connective Tissue composed of Interlacing Ribbons. 

 This variety is essentially constructed in the same manner as 

 tendons, but instead of spindle-shaped bundles, we find flat, rhom- 

 boidal ribbons. Periosteum is representative of this tissue, a 

 description of which is given on page 125. The elastic fibers bor- 

 der each ribbon or subdivide it into smaller rhomboidal fields, a 

 feature which is explicable by the history of development of the 

 territories of the ribbons. 



In the dura mater and the pericardium, the bundles are dis- 

 tinctly striated and not quite so flat as those in the periosteum. 



In aponeuroses, the bundles, in accordance with the general 

 sheet-like form of this tissue, are flattened and interlaced, chiefly 

 in a rectangular direction. The interstices between the bundles 

 are quite narrow, but plastids are observed here as well as in the 

 tendon. C. Ludwig, who forced colored liquids into these inter- 

 fascicular spaces, mistook the beautiful rectangular reticulum 

 thus obtained for lymph- spaces. Formations kindred to apon- 

 euroses are the fascia? and the tendinous capsules of different 

 glandular organs f. i., the capsule of the kidney, the albuginea 

 of the testis, the sheath of the cavernous bodies of the penis, etc. 



In some ligamentous formations, such as the Lig. sub-flava of 

 the vertebrae, the Lig. nucha3, the membr. thyro-cricoidea, the 

 Lig. stylo-hyoideum, etc., the fibrous basis-substance is almost 

 completely transformed and condensed into the yellow, elastic 

 substance which appears in the form of branching reticular 

 fibrillaB, between which are scantily found bundles of striated 

 connective tissue. 



(e) Coalesced Layers of Elastic Basis-substance, arranged in a 

 sheet-like manner, are often found at the borders of connective- 

 tissue formations, close beneath epithelial and endothelial layers. 

 They bear the names of hyaline, structureless, or basement mem- 

 branes, in contradistinction to "cuticular formations" of a similar 



