140 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



basis of either coarse or fine connective tissue fibres, and 

 included in tlie interstices of this are numerous small 

 round cells. Sometimes this tissue resembles that 

 shown in fig. 7, PI. Ill, but it is always much denser, 

 and the cells are, relatively to the fibrous stroma, more 

 numerous. It is sometimes very vascular, but the 

 contents of the blood-vessels are peculiar. vSometimes a 

 smaller vein or artery contains practically unmodified 

 red blood corpuscles, but these are generally aggregated 

 together in the centre of the lumen of the vessel. In 

 other places the blood corpuscles appear as if they were 

 "clumped" or agglutinated: the nuclei are few in 

 number, or entirely absent, and the cell margins are 

 indistinct as if the corpuscles had stuck together. Very 

 often the space between the axial mass of corpuscles and 

 the internal walls of the vessel is bridged by delicate 

 fibrils, radiating out in a stellate manner, and suggesting 

 the staining of fibrin filaments produced after intra- 

 vascular coagulation of the blood. I am uncertain 

 whether this coagulation has been produced in a natural 

 manner, or as the result of the fixation ; practically 

 undiluted commercial formalin solution had been 

 employed for preservation. But I am inclined to think 

 that the intra-vascular coagulation is a natural reaction 

 produced in the development of the tumour. The walls 

 of tlie blood-vessels themselves are highly modified, and 

 sometimes cannot be distinguished from the surrounding 

 connective tissue stroma. If this alteration of the blood 

 has taken place as the result of some toxic substance 

 produced locally, it may be tlie case that the other 

 vessels, with their fibrillar inclusions, have also been 

 produced in this manner; that is, they may be capillary 

 vessels containing crystalline products of the decomposi- 

 tion of the haemoglobin of the blood. I have already 



