528 Transactions of the Society. 



neutral solution of suitable specific gravity, upon tlie ball being 

 pressed will throw out filamentous processes, whicb are retracted 

 on the ball again expanding, showing that such processes are not 

 necessarily protoplasmic; they, however, demonstrate another 

 point in the constitution of the red corpuscles, viz. that they have 

 no true cell-wall or membrane, as has been sometimes supposed. 



These appearances were first described and figured in the Quart. 

 Journ. Micr. Sci. for 1861, by the late Dr. William Addison, F.R.S., 

 and after him may be appropriately termed Addison's processes. 

 He induced them by treating blood on the warm stage with a 

 solution of sherry and salt solution or quinine ; they may also be 

 produced by many other reagents and conditions, as I have previously 

 described in the same journal, 1881, where I have collated the 

 previous observations upon them. They are readily produced 

 by solutions of septic matter, and I have frequently observed 

 their occurrence spontaneously — that is without the addition of 

 reagents — in the blood of septichaemia examined under the Micro- 

 scope, where they have also been observed by others, but without 

 apparently recognizing their nature. In the report of the French 

 Cholera Commission in Egypt just published,* filamentous processes 

 from the red corpuscles of the blood kept in the incubator for 

 some days f are recorded, but without further observations upon 

 them. They probably occur also in many other pathological condi- 

 tions. They are produced by heat, as described and figured by 

 Dr. Beale and by Max Schultze, through a mere disintegrating 

 action; also by treatment with gas, as recorded and figured by 

 Professor E. Eay Lankester. In the blood of the frog they occur 

 conspicuously, and are more readily produced there than in the 

 higher animals. The appearances herein have been described in 

 sensational terms by some Grerman writers, but so vaguely that it 

 is impossible to be certain what is intended, whijther these pro- 

 cesses of the red corpuscles or true micro-parasites, one form of 

 which has been fully described by Professor Lankester ; others are 

 said to occur frequently at certain seasons, but I have not been 

 able to confirm this latter observation. 



These processes when detached from the parent corpuscle, are 

 not, as I have said, to be distinguished morphologically from Bac- 

 teria, and their behaviour to micro-chemical reagents is difficult 

 to observe, from the impossibihty of keeping these minute bodies 

 within the field of view. Upon and during such treatment they 

 are not appreciably swelled or decolorized by water, as are the 

 red or white corpuscles ; nor is the action of acids or of alkalis 

 much more apparent; they may, however, be distinguished from 



* 'Archives de Physiologie Normale et Pathologique,' 1884, p. 411. ' 

 + And others after a longer interval, at the temperature of the air (Lostorfer's 

 corpuscles ?). 



