HISTOLOGY OF THE LENS. 



365 



skopische Anatomic, p. 711, that he had been able to find but 

 few traces of any such substance in lenses in which the 

 fibres were well preserved. Hensen regarded the interfibrillar 

 passages of Becker as artificial products; and Sernoff has 

 lately demonstrated that neither the stellate fissures, with the 

 substance supposed to be contained in them, nor the inter- 

 fibrillar passages, have any existence. This last-named observer 

 has shown also that in quite fresh and also in carefully 

 hardened specimens the fibres of the lens directly abut against 



Fig. 373*. 



Fig. 373 B. Posterior stella of the lens. 



one another in the stellse, the radii of the star when examined 

 with high powers appearing in the form of sinuous lines (fig. 

 374). Carefully made sections of the lens in various directions 

 show also clearly that no kind of intervening space exists 

 between the fibres. It thus appears that both Becker's struc- 

 tureless stellate substance and his intercellular passages are 

 simply artificial products, the former probably depending on a 

 splitting of the ends of the lens fibres, and the latter on a dis- 

 location of the fibres consequent on the sections having been 

 roughly and carelessly made. 



