92 PROF. GULLIVER ON THE RED CorPUSCLES [Feb. 25, 
the colour resides; and this matter, which forms the chief bulk of 
the corpuscle, is very soluble in water, while the membranous part 
is insoluble in water. ‘The corpuscle is slippery, soft, elastic, and 
viscid ; it will assume a variety of forms, and quickly return to its 
regular shape; and the corpuscles will stick together, not only in 
the well-known piles, but also by their edges. Dr. Hodgkin and 
Mr. Lister noticed the viscidity of the part of the corpuscles which 
had been ruptured by pressure; but Dr. Davy first clearly described 
the general viscidity of the entire corpuscles, which has been con- 
firmed by the recent observations of Dr. Charles Robin, who appears 
to have been unacquainted with the observations just mentioned, so 
long before made in this country. I have observed that this viscidity 
of the corpuscles is much increased in buffy blood. 
The regular corpuscle has no nucleus—nothing at all like that so 
plain in the corpuscle of oviparous Vertebrata. Even the oval cor- 
puscle of Camelidee has the true Mammalian type, both in size and 
structure, being of the small size usual to Ruminantia, and alike de- 
stitute of a nucleus; so that it is in shape only that these corpuscles 
resemble those of the inferior classes, as proved by me long since in the 
papers cited below. And as the history of what, in 1845, Mr. Whar- 
ton Jones appropriately called ‘this vexed question of a nucleus”? is 
interesting and important in physiological literature, and seems never 
to have been clearly known, we may dwell a little on the subject. 
The mistake of describing a nucleus in the red corpuscle of Mam- 
malia arose from its central spot, and from the observers having seen 
the nucleus so plainly in the larger corpuscles of fishes and reptiles. 
Thus Hewson, using the corpuscles of the Skate to ascertain their 
structure, never entertained a doubt that the nucleus he saw so plainly 
—‘ ‘like a pea in a bladder”—in the red corpuscle of that fish was 
a true representative of a nucleus in the human blood-corpuscle, and, 
indeed, that what was true of the structure of the one was equally so 
of the other. 
And this error, in one shape or other, prevailed up to our time, 
and was quite general about the year 1839, when I was always en- 
deavouring to correct it (see Med. Ch. Trans. vol. xxiii.; Lancet, 
1840-41, p. 101; and my App. to Gerber’s Anatomy, p. 13); while 
Miiller, Krause, Gerber, and others, following Prevost and Dumas and 
Prof. Milne-Edwards on the Continent, had satisfied themselves of 
the existence of a nucleus in the human blood-corpuscle ; and the late 
Dr. Martin Barry was publishing engravings in the ‘ Philosophical 
Transactions,’ in London, of what he regarded as positive proofs of 
this so-called nucleus. But it must be recollected that in 1827 
Dr. Hodgkin and Mr. Lister made the following statement :—‘ Our 
observations are at variance with the opinion long since formed by 
Hewson, that these particles consisted of a central globule inclosed in 
a vesicle composed of the coloured part; and which, though refuted by 
Dr. Young, has since in a modified form been revived by Sir Everard 
Home and Bauer in this country, and by Prevost and Dumas on the 
Continent.”? This conclusion of Dr. Hodgkin and Mr. Lister refers 
to their examination of the human blood-corpuscles; and most in- 
