for the year 1868. 7 



as that taken one hour after death from an animal that 

 survived the poison eleven hours. 



Considering the importance of this subject, I make no 

 apology for troubling you with a succinct account of my 

 personal experience concerning Professor Halford's discovery. 

 Some little time since, I had, in company with a friend, a 

 good observer with the microscope, an opportunity of wit- 

 nessing the progress of this cell growth. A dog bitten by 

 an Australian tiger snake at 9 a.m., died in an hour ; at 

 3 o'clock some blood taken from a vein was dark and quite 

 fluid. Under the microscope the red and white corpuscles 

 appeared normal in size and shape, but were moving about 

 free in the fluid liquor sanguinis, and not sticking together 

 in rouleaus, as is usual with healthy blood. Amongst these 

 corpuscles we .observed spaces where some apparently struc- 

 tureless granular matter had pushed them aside. An hour 

 after a fresh supply of blood from another vein showed us 

 amongst what appeared to be the same kind of granular 

 matter, large nucleated cells, which we estimated to be from 

 three to four times the diameter of the ordinary red cor- 

 puscle ; these cells, whose walls were so delicate and translu- 

 cent that it required most careful management of the light 

 for their definition contained nuclei, some, one, many with two, 

 three, or even more ; delicate as they were, however, they 

 became as distinct as the ordinary red corpuscle by the 

 application of a little magenta dye, which did not seem to 

 alter their dimensions in the least by osmotic action. In 

 many of these cells also, the little macula on the cell wall 

 was observed, but not on all. In blood taken from the 

 jugular vein twenty-four hours after death, we observed 

 these cells, now appearing more tense, in immense numbers, 

 and many of the nuclei floating about free, as well as a great 

 quantity of transparent acicular crystals, which magenta dye 

 rendered very distinct, 



