176 CONNECTIVE TISSUE. 



is tinted equally dark violet, while its extremely narrow meshes appear pale 

 violet. (See Fig. 66.) 



The borders of the corpuscles and their branches are nowhere distinct; 

 contours in the real sense of the word are wanting in the gold specimen as 

 well as in the silver specimen, inasmuch as from the whole circumference of 

 these ramifying, dark violet fields immense numbers of fine threads protrude, 

 to join their neighboring dark violet granules within the basis-substance. The 

 examination of any portion of such a specimen will not fail to convince the 

 observer that also in the basis-substance nearly all dark granules are inter- 

 connected by fine threads. The cause of the difference between the shade of 

 the cornea corpuscles and that of the basis-substance is, that in the former the 

 granules are larger and lie close together, and consequently the meshes are 

 very small, while within the basis-substance the granules are mostly fine and 

 more dispersed, and for this reason are separated from one another by larger 

 meshes. 



In some lamellae, and, as it seemed to me, principally in the outer layers 

 of the cornea, many corpuscles are connected with one another, not by broad 

 branches, but by dark violet, more or less straight lines, which, for their 

 characteristic rosary-like structure must be considered uon-medullated nerve- 

 fibers. (See Fig. 67.) 



In profile, the gold-stained cornea of the cat offers another proof of the 

 coincidence of the positive gold image with the negative silver specimen. 



FIG. 68. CORNEA OF A CAT, Two YEARS OLD, STAINED WITH A ONE- 

 HALF PER CENT. SOLUTION OF CHLORIDE OF GOLD, AFTER BEING 

 TREATED WITH DILUTED LACTIC ACID. TRANSVERSE SECTION. [PUB- 

 LISHED IN 1878.] 



P, dark violet fields with broad branches and with fine offshoots, the latter being nerves, 

 N; the net- work ol the dark fields everywhere is in connection with that of the basis-sub- 

 stance, B, Magnified 1000 diameters. 



Flat, elongated, dark violet bodies are visible, which, in the horizontal direc- 

 tion, anastomose with one another by means of fine long processes ; while 

 broad, rather oblique, dark violet branches ascend and descend to connect 

 the corpuscles of different layers. The net-work of the dark fields and that 

 of the basis-substance are shown with the same clearness as in split speci- 

 mens. The laminate structure of the cornea is just as imperceptible in these 

 transverse sections as it is in those of the silver-stained cornea. ( See Fig. 68. ) 

 In transverse sections of the gold-stained cornea of a dog I observed, espe- 

 cially in the central parts of the cornea, formations which sufficiently explain 



