480 THE BLOOD. 



some is poured fresh into a dish, it acquires a party-coloured 

 appearance, from particles of decolorized clot being inter- 

 spersed amongst red coagula. The appearance of inflamma- 

 tory blood in some animals is the appearance of normal 

 blood in the horse, and especially of blood drawn from a 

 horse in a weak or anaemic condition. If, for some time 

 previous to death, horses have been starved, their blood 

 presents a clot which, to a great extent, is yellow, and only 

 a small portion is of a red colour. The cause of the produc- 

 tion of a ' buffy coat' is evidently a tardy coagulation, which 

 admits of the precipitation of the blood particles. Hewson 

 thought the blood was thinner, and that it coagulated quickly 

 when the bufiy appearance resulted, but such appears not to 

 be the case. Nasse believed that the blood-corpuscles in 

 the horse or in inflammatory blood, ran together so as to 

 form masses which readily gravitate to the bottom of the 

 jar, and leave the surface of a yellow colour. Dr .Jones said 

 that the running together of the corpuscles tended to form 

 a network from which the liquor sanguinis was expressed 

 This does not appear, however, to have a great influence in 

 the production of the buffy coat. The rolling together of the 

 particles may, however, explain the mottled appearance of 

 horse's blood, and of inflammatory blood when exposed in a 

 thin layer in a dish. 



The cause of the blood's coagulation has been investigated 

 by many intelligent observers. The most recent and cer- 

 tainly the most satisfactory experiments have been conducted 

 by Dr Benjamin Richardson, who obtained the Astley Cooper 

 prize for 1856, for his Essay on this subject. A large 

 volume contains the results of Dr Richardson's observations. 

 He says: 



" The total of this essay is summed in two major and a few minor pro- 

 positions. 



