ACTION OF AMMONIA ON THE RED CORPUSCLES. 403 



corpuscles the same effect as water. In the blood of Amphibia 

 the inflated nuclei become, after a short time, tinged of a red 

 colour. The blood corpuscles behave differently in the above- 

 mentioned solutions of carmine in ammonia if from one-half 

 to one per cent, of common salt be added, since they then 

 remain apparently unaltered, and take up none of the carmine 

 into their interior. On the other hand, the nucleus immediately 

 becomes stained. If a mixture of blood and this coloured 

 saline solution be allowed to freeze or be acted on by discharges 

 of electricity, a series of remarkable phenomena may then be 

 observed, upon the investigation of which I am now engaged. 



If the blood of frogs or newts be allowed to flow into such 

 saline solutions of carmine, there may always be found, besides 

 the ordinary red and white blood corpuscles with nuclei, which 

 long remain unstained, a few isolated free nuclei of an intense 

 red colour. It thus appears that when unaltered the blood 

 corpuscles do not absorb any colouring matter. 



Rindfleisch* has described a remarkable alteration effected 

 in the blood corpuscles of the frog by the addition of soluble 

 anilin blue. They are then found to become nucleated 

 spheroids, which quickly assume a blue colour, but it is only in 

 solutions containing about a half-gramme to 100 cubic centi- 

 meters that the remarkable phenomenon of the discharge of 

 the nucleus from the now spherical corpuscles occurs. It is 

 especially remarkable that any part of the nucleus which once 

 projects beyond the contour line of the corpuscle immediately 

 swells up to a considerable extent, so that at this period the 

 form of the nucleus resembles a short nail with a large head, 

 which seems to have been driven into the substance of the 

 corpuscle. When the nucleus has become altogether detached 

 from the corpuscle, it swells up uniformly, becomes stained, and 

 undergoes further changes, to be hereafter investigated. 



i. Gases and vapours have lately, since the employment of 

 gas cells, been likewise applied directly to preparations of 

 blood under the microscope. 



a. Strickerf has been especially engaged in investigating the 



* Loc. cit., pp. 10, 11. 



t Pfluger's Archiv, 1868, p. 590. 



