MUSCULAR TISSUE. IOI 



connective tissue. Such bundles are again grouped 

 to form larger bundles, and thus the larger and 

 smaller muscular bellies and bands are formed. 

 Arteries enter the muscular bundles and break up 

 into capillaries, which run along the fibres, forming 

 a long and narrow-meshed net. Motor nerves also 

 pass into the muscles, divide and subdivide, and 

 terminate, at the surface of the individual fibres, in 

 structures called motor end plates. 

 TECHNIQUE:. 



Fresh Muscle. A very small bit is dissected off, with 

 as little stretching as possible, from one of the voluntary 

 muscles of a recently-killed mammal, and carefully teased 

 longitudinally in salt solution. In such a preparation the 

 transverse bands and indistinct longitudinal striations 

 will be seen, and here and there, where the needles have 

 pressed on the fibres, the contractile substance may be 

 seen to have been broken across and the broken ends to 

 have retracted within the sarcolemma, leaving the latter 

 as a. clear and sometimes folded membrane stretching 

 across the interval. At the cut ends of the fibres the 

 contractile substance will often be seen swelling and ex- 

 truding from the sarcolemma in the form of an obscurely 

 striated fungiform mass. Here and there nuclei are seen; 

 but they may be brought much more clearly into view by 

 allowing a drop of two-per-cent. hydric acetate to flow 

 under the cover glass ; then the contractile substance 

 swells and becomes transparent, the striations becoming 

 indistinct as the somewhat shrunken nuclei become more 

 clearly defined. 



