336 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Actinomyces in cattle and man ; and lastly some forms belonging 

 to the group of low Fungi known as Mycetozoa, Mixomycetes, or 

 Plasmodia. In this connection may be mentioned the important 

 discoveries of Marchiafava and Celli on the cause of intermittent 

 fever or ague. These observers have shown the existence, in the 

 blood of persons affected with ague, of certain forms of Plas- 

 modium, and these are probably the cause of the disease ; and 

 recently also Dr. D. Cunningham, of Calcutta, found in the tissue 

 of the so-called "Delhi sore" (a cutaneous disorder in India), 

 a form of plasmodium. 



Now, a careful examination, after my return from Scotland, 

 of microscopic sections of the liver of Grouse dead of the disease, 

 showed the existence, in the capillary blood-vessels and also in 

 large branches of the veins of the liver, of numerous objects which 

 do not belong, and are foreign to the normal liver tissue, as well 

 as to the blood, or any other tissue of the bird. In suitably 

 prepared specimens (hardening in alcohol, staining of fine sections 

 in methylene blue), every capillary blood-vessel, or at any rate 

 the spaces between the streaks of liver-cells usually occupied by 

 capillary blood-vessels, contain certain corpuscles, which are about 

 two to four times the diameter of the liver-cells, and of the white 

 blood-corpuscles. The bodies in question are present in very 

 great numbers, and are of various shapes— some cylindrical, others 

 spindle-shaped, some are irregular and with one or more pro- 

 cesses, while others are irregularly elongated ; each consists of 

 a hyaline protoplasm, in which one or two oval nuclei are occa- 

 sionally noticed ; but most of the protoplasm of the corpuscles is 

 filled with spherical or irregular coarse particles. The protoplasm 

 does not take the stain, while these particles are deeply tinted. 

 The impression these bodies give one is that they are some form 

 of Plasmodium, arrested by the hardening re-agent in one or 

 the other phase of amoeboid movement, such as is shown by 

 Plasmodium, There can be no question about these bodies, they 

 are present everywhere in the capillaries of the liver. I have seen 

 them also in most of the larger branches of the veins of the liver, 

 and here I have also met with forms which very well harmonise 

 with this view — viz., some forms spherical in shape, smaller 

 than the above, and inclosed in a distinct capsule ; they would 

 correspond to the spores of plasmodium. Further, nucleated 

 corpuscles with uniform protoplasm were noticed differing from 



