ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 481 



A solution of salt coloured with methyl-violet has this property. The 

 best method of examining them in the human subject is to place a 

 drop of the above coloured solution over the puncture and mix the 

 drop of blood thoroughly with it. 



Owing to their typical forms, it is very unlikely that they are 

 derived from the red corpuscles. The colourless corpuscles contain no 

 ingredients from which they could be derived. After bleeding, and 

 in many diseased conditions, they are increased in numbers. They 

 play an important part in the formation of thrombi and the coagula- 

 tion of the blood, which has been attributed by Mantegazza and 

 Schmidt to the white corpuscles, because the latter are few in number 

 in the circulating blood, and their destruction was never observed by 

 Bizzozero, provided the blood was mixed with a saline solution. 

 Again, the time at which coagulation sets in corresponds very closely 

 to the time that these new corpuscles undergo degeneration. The 

 fluids which retard or prevent coagulation — as solutions of carbonate 

 of soda and sulphate of magnesia — have the same action in pre- 

 venting the granular degeneration of these corpuscles. An indif- 

 ferent solution of salt does not preserve them, but one to which the 

 methyl-violet has been added does. 



From this evidence it appears (to the editor of the ' Cincinnati 

 Medical News ') highly probable that the formation of fibrine takes 

 place under the direct influence of these corpuscles. To them Bizzo- 

 zero gives the name of " Blutplattchen." 



Life and Death in the Animal Organism.* — After completing 

 an important investigation on the " Earliest developmental operations 

 in the ovum, on cell-division, and on conjugation in the Infusoria," 

 O. Biitschli, early in 1876, wrote an essay headed " Thoughts on Life 

 and Death," but he left it unpublished, considering, on the one hand, 

 that his ideas on the differences between Protozoa and Metazoa in 

 respect of the phenomena of death were too recently acquired to be 

 made known, especially in print, and that, on the other hand, tho 

 speculations which he had associated with these ideas were too 

 immature to be made permanent. His fundamental views, however, 

 namely those relating to the non-existence of individual death in the 

 Protozoa, have now been published. 



" If we glance over the phenomena of the origin and destruction 

 of beings in the great series of animal organisms, we are astonished 

 by a significant contrast in the importance of individuality in the 

 higher, i. e. the many-celled, as compared with the lower, j. e. the uni- 

 cellular, forms, the Infusoria or Ehizopoda. Whilst in the first the 

 individual, in almost all cases, asserts an existence definite and 

 distinct even from its progeny, in the unicellular forms, on the 

 contrary, which reproduce by fission, we are met with the fact 

 (which does not usually receive much attention) that at the time of 

 reproduction the individual, as such, ceases to exist, and divides its 

 individuality equally between the individualities of its two offspring, 

 which now come into existence. This remarkable phenomenon 



* Zool. Anzeig., v. (1882) pp. 64-7. Cf. Naturforscher, xv. (1882) pp. 125-6. 

 Ser. 2.— Vol. II. 2 K 



