xxxiv Appendix. 



first tiling to be noted is that however soon the blood may be examined after 

 being taken from the bird, it will be found to contain not only oval nucleated 

 red corpuscles and cii'cular white ones, but also non-nucleated cii'cular red 

 corpuscles, exactly like those of the mammalia, except that they appeared to 

 be biconvex. These have been seen within fifteen minutes of the blood being 

 taken from the body. It is important to note this fact, as it bears out and 

 explains the changes that subsequently take place.* 



The first of these is that the corpuscles become thicker, and the nucleus 

 swells. This is seen very well when the corpuscles turn on their edges. Many 

 of them then, or soon after, become bent or curved, so that their outline when 

 they turn on their side is that of a concave convex lens. (See Plate XXIX., A.) 

 Numerous very minute, bright, highly refracting spherical particles are ^een. 

 These do not coalesce, and are nearly all of one size. At the end of an hour's 

 exposure to the heat of the body, it was observed that many of the round red 

 corpuscles (which when the blood was first drawn presented no appearance of 

 a nucleus) showed nuclei ; a few oval corpuscles had serrated edges. No 

 change in the great majority. 



At the end of twenty-four hours the " red corpuscles had precipitated 

 in the manner previously described ; the albumen was much more liquid ; 

 nuclei becoming large, round, and well defined ; many circular copuscles." 



The next change observed is that the shapes of the corpuscles are now 

 much altered, and may be pyriform. Many of the nuclei are double, and are 

 evidently about to divide. Their mode of division is a subsequent stage. 

 They separate widely within the corpuscles, one going to one side or end, and 

 the other to the opposite. (Plate XXIX., A.) In some cases it appeare as if 

 the germinal matter divided into four parts. The nucleus becomes elongated 

 and narrow in some cases, and in others spherical and filling out the corpuscles. 

 The nucleus escapes, leaving a gap in the outer part of the corpuscles, which 

 then rapidly shrinks and loses its colour. In subsequent stages it may be 

 noted that the old corpuscular walls are often seen massed together, quite 

 colourless, and their outlines only to be seen by a careful management of the 

 light, and granular, as if undergoing fatty degeneration. After being kept all 

 night in contact with the body the large majority of the oval corpuscles have 

 disappeared; those that remain are much changed in outline, and evidently 

 about to proliferate, while a number of free nuclei are seen, sometimes singly, but 

 usually massed together in groups. (Plate XXIX., B.) At first these neucli are 



• Beale also describes in human blood the appearance of red corpuscles of very varied 

 size and shape. I have described some of these varieties, especially the serrated edges, 

 in a paper read before the Anthropological Society, and published in their journal, "()n 

 the appearances presented by the red corpuscles of the blood in various races of 

 mankind." llollet (New Sydenham Society's Translation of Strieker's Histology) also 

 describes several varieties of the red corpuscles. 



