CARTILAGE AND CONNECTIVE TISSUE. 



103 



lie, and these opening into others by their offsets there is 

 formed a set of minute tubes ramifying through the con- 

 nective tissues; and (since these in turn permeate nearly all 

 the Body) pervading all the organs. In these cell-cavities 

 and their branches the lymph flows before it enters definite 

 lymphatic vessels, and they are accordingly known as lymph 



FIG. 47. Connective-tissue corpuscles : a. from areolar tissue ; 6, from tendon ; 

 c, wandering cells. 



canaliculi. In addition to the fixed branched connective- 

 tissue corpuscles there are often found other cells, when livi-ng 

 connective tissue is examined. These cells much resemble 

 white blood-corpuscles, and probably are such which have 

 bored through the walls of the finer blood-vessels. They 

 creep about along the canaliculi by means of their faculty 

 of amoeboid movement, and are known as the "wandering 

 cells. 



Subsidiary Varieties of Connective Tissue In various 

 parts of the Body are connective-tissue structures which have 

 not undergone the typical development, but have departed 

 from it in one way or another. The cells having formed a 

 non-fibrillated intercellular substance around them, develop- 

 ment may go no farther and the mass remain permanently as 

 the jellylike connective tissue ; or, as in the vitreous humor 

 of the eye (Chap. XXXI), the cells having formed the soft 

 matrix, may disappear and leave the latter only. In other 

 cases the intercellular substance disappears and the cells 

 branching, and joining by the ends of their branches, form a 

 network themselves, nucleated or not at the points answering 

 to the centre of each originally separate cell. This is known 

 as adenoid connective tissue. In other cases the cells almost 

 alone constitute the tissue, becoming flattened, closely fitted 

 at their edges, and united by a very small amount of cement- 

 substance. Membranes formed in this way lie beneath 

 epithelium in many places and are known as basement- 



