Amoeboid cells in intestinal absorption. 



11 



reagents which coagulate albuminous sulbstances, the striated border 

 of the coliinmar epithelium cell seems firm and resistüig in nature 

 and has hence been freqnently spoken of as a cuticular covering to 

 the cell, the study of the tissue in the fresh condition shows that it 

 is in reality as soft as the protoplasm itself, and surpasses even that 

 in the readiness with which it imbibes fluid and becomes swollen 

 in consequence of such imbibition. This is in fact the portion of the 

 cell which first of all becomes destroyed when treated with water. 

 It is clearly therefore not a covering whose function it is to protect 

 the cell from the action of the intestinal contents ; its use is probably 

 indicated by the strongly marked property of imbibition which it 

 exhibits, as will subsequently be pointed out more fully. 



Attention has been frequently called to the close resemblance 

 which is manifested by this striated border of the columnar cell, to the 



bunch of cilia which surmounts a ciliated cell '), the resemblance 

 being still further heightened by the fact that in both cases the struc- 

 tures in question are attached to a bright highly refracting border 

 bounding the actual cell body. Some observers indeed have gone so 

 far as to assert that the Striae of the columnar cell are neither more 

 nor less than cilia. To this it may be responded that since they fail 

 to exhibit the fundamental and characteristic property of cilia, that 

 namely of rhythmic Vibration, they can scarcely come under the same 

 deflnition. And except perhaps here and there in isolated patches, 

 the result probably of arrested development, true ciliary motion does 

 not occur in connection with the columnar cells of the intestine of 

 vertebrates: common as it is amongst invertebrate animals.^) 



•) Ptinke, in Zeitschr. f. wissenseh. Zoologie VII, 1856; Henle, Allgem. Anatomie. 

 ") Thanhoffer, loc. cit. asserts that he has occasionally observed actual ciliary 



