A SIMPLIFIED VIEW OF THE HISTOLOGY OF THE 

 STRIPED MUSCLE FIBRE. 



By B. Mblland, B.Sc, Piatt Physiological Scholar in the 

 Oivens College. 



[Plate X.] 



Introduction. 



Everyone who has considered the subject must admit the essential 

 identity from a physiological point of view of all those tissues which 

 possess in a special degree contractility. The contraction of a white 

 blood corpuscle or amoeba is essentially the same phenomenon as the 

 contraction of an involuntary fibre cell or a striped muscle fibre. 



When we consider these three contractile tissues from a histological 

 point of view we are struck by an apparently essential difference in 

 character between the striped muscle fibre and the elements of the 

 other two contractile tissues, and indeed cells generally. The voluntary 

 muscle fibre is morphologically a cell like a muscle fibre cell and the 

 amoeboid corpuscle. Yet it differs from the latter and from all other 

 cells in showing a characteristic transverse striation. 



According to Klein, 1 the protoplasm of the simpler contractile 

 tissues, (1) the amoeboid cell, (2) the ciliated cell, and (3) the involun- 

 tary fibre cell, agrees, inasmuch as it consists of two parts — a matrix 

 and an arrangement of fine fibrils, the intracellular network. The 

 actual arrangement of the fibrils differs somewhat in the three cases. 

 1 'Klein, « Atlas of Histology,' diagrams 1 and 4, and fig 2, pi. xv. 

 Q 



