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SCIENCR 



[Vol. XX. No. 514 



Oregon. Craig (botanist) is working an weed.", forage plants, 

 and plant diseases. 



Pennsylvania. Buckhout (botanist) is engaged in forestry and 

 hybridization, and working on the practical side of potato-rot and 

 downy mildew of the grape. 



Rhode Island. Kinney (horticulturist and acting botanist) has 

 reached imporiant results in tlie treatment of seed-potatoes with 

 Bordeaux mixture to prevent potato-scab; is also treating seeds. 



South Dakota. Williams (botanist) is making observations on 

 forage plants suited to varying conditions in different parts of 

 the Slate, and studying plum-pockets and a geranium disease. 



Tennessee. Scribner (director and botanist) has published a list 

 of the grasses of the State in the form of a p pular edition, to be 

 followed by a more technical one. 



Texas. Price (horticulturist; is treating cotton and grape dis- 

 eases. 



Utah. The entomologist is acting-botanist. 



Virginia. Smy the has charge of phanerogamic botany. Alwood 

 (horticulturist) is studying apple-leaf diseases and experimenting 

 on weak solutions of copper salts for plant diseases. 



Vermont. Jones (botanist) has made a test of the comparative 

 value of a number of the standard fungicides on potato-rot (Phy- 

 tophthora infestans). 



Wisconsin. Goff (horticulturist) is working on apple-scab and 

 experimenting on the germination of seeds. 



Mention should also be made of the work of the Division of 

 Vegetable Pathology, Department of Agricf.lture, Washington, 

 with its corps of half a dozen workers carrying on important and 

 fruitful investigations, the larger subjects of investigation at 

 present being a mysterious vine disease in California, orange dis- 

 eases in Florida, and fruit diseases in New York. 



A large number of the experiment station botanists do more or 

 less teaching, since most of tlie stations are connected with, or 

 located near, the State agricultural colleges. This large field of 

 work for specialists offers one of the best openings for young 

 men desirous of becoming either investigators or teachers. New 

 fields are opening each year and changes are being made, so that 

 for some time there will be a demand for young men not only 

 •well trained in general botanical science, but those who also have 

 improved the opportunities presented for familiarizing themselves 

 with methods of artificial cultures of micro organisms and fungi. 

 The call for original investigation at the experiment stations im- 

 plies with it belter equipment than would possibly be supplied 

 under other circumstances at many of the State colleges. This 

 affords, then, the ambitious teacher good facilities for being at 

 the same time an im-estigator, while it also offers the investigator 

 good opportunities for experience in teaching. 



This dual responsibility becomes burdensome if too much of 

 either is required without ample assistance; but, in many cases, 

 teaching duties are lessened in order to give time for the investi- 

 gation. When the burden is not too great, an ambitious young 

 man with strength and enthusiasm is likely soon to be promoted 

 to greater positions of trust carrying a less number of the more 

 irksome dulies. 



THE RETICULATED STRUCTURE OF HUM VN RED BLOOD- 

 CORPUSCLES. 



BY DR. ALFRED 0. STOKES, TRENTON, N. J. 



Whatever the histologist may believe in regard to the reticu- 

 lated structure of the human red blood-corpuscles, whether he 

 accepts it as normal structure or not, he canno*^ fail to be im- 

 pressed by the beauty of the minute plexus of fibrils, or to be 

 gratified by the ease with which the net-work structure will ex- 

 plain certain physiological problems. But since Dr. Louis Els- 

 berg, in 1879, first announced his discovery of this structure in 

 the human red corpuscles, the subject seems not to have at 

 tracted, among histologists, the attention it deserves. It has 

 been ridiculed by some, just why I have never understood, as the 

 announcement was certainly of sutBcient interest to merit fur- 

 ther investigation in all seriousness, and while some prominent 

 Jiistologists were disposed to accept Elsberg's observations as 



demonstrable, his conclusions were pretty generally waved 

 aside with scant courtesy. Klein, of England, seems to be one 

 of the believers in the existence of the reticulation within the red 

 blood-corpuscles as normal structure, while Ranvier, the learned 

 French histologist and professor in the College of France, dis- 

 misses the subject in a single sentence in his treatise on human 

 histology, saying that tlie reticulum is an illusion produced by 

 wrinkles on the surface uf the corpuscle, and letting it go at that. 

 Ranvier's dictum should properly dispose less well informed stu- 

 dents to be cautious in their statements, and especially in their 

 belief in what their own eye sight seems to show them. Yet 

 after the corpuscles have been exposed to the action of a five per 

 cent solution of potassium bichromate, the reticulated appearance 

 is so distinct, it is so constantly present, and the most authorita 

 tive investigators are so sure that the bichromate of potassium in 

 solution can have no deleterious effect on the most delicate proto- 

 plasmic .structure, that in the mind of every mioroscopist that 

 sees the reticulations in the red corpuscles from his own blood, 

 there must be an unconquerable doubt as to the correctness of 

 Ranvier's opinion and assertion. The net-work, or the corrugated 

 surface, is so exceedingly minute, even when studied with the 

 best high power objectives, that mere superficial examination 

 can scarcely hope to decide whether the appearances are due to 

 wrinkles on the surface, or to a reticulation below it, although 

 the aspect is certainly much less like a wrinkling than like a 

 reticulum. The net like collection of fibrils is too regularly and 

 too evenly developed to impress the observer with the belief that 

 it is a collection of wrinkles only or even chiefly. 



The action of water on the red corpuscles in such that they 

 soon become inflated and finally invisible. They are not dis- 

 solved but are rendered invisible, as a drop of any aniline stain 

 run under the thin glass covering these invisible bodies will 

 demonstrate, by again bringing them into view. The five per 

 cent solution of potassium bichromate also distends the corpus- 

 cles, not to the same extent, it is true, as does water alone, yet 

 the distention is conspicuous. It is natural, therefore, to suppose 

 that, although the reiiculations and the bodies bearing them are 

 not even microscopically large, yet if the appearances are due to 

 a net-work of surface wrinkles produced by the potassium salt, 

 the absorption of the water carrying the salt, and the consequent 

 distention of the corpuscle, should have a tendency to lessen the 

 nuaiber of the wrinkles and likewise to lessen their prominence, 

 but this is not the result. 



To investigate the subject for my own personal gratification, I 

 submitted red blood-corpuscles to the action of a five per cent 

 solution of potassium bichromate for an hour, then transferred 

 them to a cell of some depth in which was an exceedingly weak 

 solution of the same salt, hoping that the action of the water 

 would still further distend the corpuscles and, at least to a cer- 

 tain extent, obliterate the surface markings, if they were such. 

 In numerous corpuscles the result was that hoped for, so far as 

 distention was concerned, the bodies in many cases becoming 

 almost globular. A touch of a fine needle-point on the cover- 

 glass rolled over and over beneath the objective, yet, distended 

 as they were, the reticulation was in no way undefined nor un- 

 certain. It surely was not less conspicuous; it actually seemed 

 more prominent, an effect readily explainable by the elongation 

 in all directions of the internal fibrils, if they existed, and the 

 consequent enlarging of the inter-fibrillar spaces. 



By pressure on the cover glass it is not difficult to crush such 

 distended corpuscles, and, although the result is always an inde- 

 scribable deformity, the reticulation is still to be seen plainly in 

 some specimens, and to show some traces of its existence in 

 all. 



Under such circumstances, too, it is not impossible to cut a 

 corpuscle in two by drawing a fine needle across the thin cover- 

 glass. In my experiment the needle cut only a single one of the 

 sub-spherical globules, it is true, but that separation was acci- 

 dentally accomplished so completely, and the two parts were 

 studied so long and carefully, that there remains no doubt in my 

 mind as to the correctness of the observation or of the interpreta- 

 tion. A single globule had been cut, not entirely into two parts, 

 but so nearly in two that the currents in the medium had lifted 



