82 PRELIMINARY COLD STORAGE STUDIES. 



with great distinctness, and its very large quantity is often more 

 apparent here than in the longitudinal section. The connective tissue 

 fibers have lost much of their fibril quality, showing a tendency to 

 swell and in some cases giving almost an appearance of a mucoid 

 degeneration. (Plate VII, fig. 2.) 



The staining character of this cold-stored muscle fiber shows con- 

 siderable inequality. With the Coca modification of the Borrel stain 

 the fiber of the normal muscle is a perfectly even, clear green. The 

 fiber of the muscle under discussion is apt to stain irregularly, and 

 there is a tendency to a brownish yellow tinge in many places rather 

 than the clear green. The nuclei still take the crimson red. The 

 exuded substance from the muscle fiber takes a green which is almost 

 exactly that of the fiber itself. The connective tissue, which is nor- 

 mally a very brilliant dark,blue, has lost a good deal of its color and 

 has become a dirty green. It is quite possible to trace these color 

 changes from tissue which is normal, through the various gradations 

 of color and texture, until finally the extreme of the alteration is 

 reached. 



Though the bacteriological examination of the muscle of these 

 chickens shows a considerable number of organisms in the breast 

 tissue, organisms could not be found in the sections by microscopic 

 study. When the size of the breast muscle of a chicken is considered 

 as compared with the exceedingly small area represented by even a 

 large number of sections, it must be looked upon more as good luck 

 than good management when there is success in locating bacteria 

 microscopically in such a tissue, and the fact that none were found 

 in the muscle of the breast is by no means conclusive proof of their 

 absence. 



In the muscles of the inner thigh it was possible to demonstrate 

 under the microscope a very distinct bacterial invasion. This is rep- 

 resented in Plate VIII, which shows the longitudinal and the cross 

 sections of a muscle fiber that has been penetrated by organisms, a 

 colony of which has developed to such size that the fiber itself is a 

 mere shell. With a magnification of 400 or 500 diameters these 

 tightly packed organisms appear, as in the drawing, as almost a solid 

 mass, staining from a dirty green to a deep purple. With a magnifi- 

 cation of 1,000 diameters, or over, it is possible on the edges and in 

 the thinner portions of this mass to resolve it into individual organ- 

 isms which, in this case, are morphologically rod forms. 



There will be noticed in the cross section a more brilliant purple 

 than prevails in the longitudinal section, and in the longitudinal sec- 

 tion, also, the more distinctly purple tone fades gradually until it is 

 lost in a dirty green. Such variation seems to be due to the progress 

 of the organism in the fiber, those portions which are but slightly 

 invaded retaining the green color and losing it little by little until, 



