ACTION OF WATER ON THE RED CORPUSCLES. 395 



swelling up, although the diameter of the spheroid may be 

 actually smaller than the long diameter of the corresponding 

 disk (fig. 72). The spheroids are at first strongly coloured. On 

 the cautious addition of water it may be frequently observed 

 that the alteration of the primary form of the blood corpuscle 

 to a spheroid does not occur with perfect uniformity in all the 

 several and corresponding diameters, so that variable and 



Fig. 72. 



transitory unsymmetrical intervening forms are met with. In 

 the nucleated ellipsoids it frequently happens that the nucleus 

 changes its position in the corpuscle with a jerk,* whilst the 

 corpuscle itself, as though in consequence of a recoil, is pro- 

 jected in the opposite direction. The nucleus then lies eccen- 

 trically in the corpuscle. 



When water has continued its action on the corpuscles for a 

 longer period, the spheroids become discoloured, and frequently 

 produce the impression that their colouring matter is being 

 gradually extracted ; frequently also the colour disappears very 

 rapidly, just as a hue of colour vanishes from a white surface 

 when a coloured source of light by which it was previously 

 illuminated is suddenly removed. The impressions thus given 

 are precisely similar to those decolorations which have been 

 formerly mentioned as the result of electrical discharges. 



Smooth colourless bodies with feebly defined but smooth 

 contour lines then remain (fig. 72, 666). 



The nucleus which at the commencement of the action of 



* See also the statements respecting the movements of the nucleus by 

 C. H. Schultz. Preyer, loc. cit., p. 437. 



F F 



