MARKET COLD-STORAGE CHICKENS. 83 



when the mass of organisms has quite obliterated the tissue, the color 

 is deep purple. 



Such changes have been traced in a number of fibers in this leg 

 muscle. It has also been possible, in chickens kept at ordinary 

 temperatures until decomposition had undoubtedly set in, to locate 

 the same phenomena not only in the muscles of the leg but in other 

 muscles also. 



The chickens No. 69 and No. 79, which had been kept in storage 

 for 2 years with two thawings and one refreezing, furnish an 

 exceedingly interesting study. The degeneration here has progressed 

 much further than that observed in the chickens in storage 14 

 months. 



In chicken No. 69, also, a study has been made of the tissue thawed 

 by soaking and thawed by cold air. Microscopic differences between 

 these two methods of thawing are exceedingly marked. The longi- 

 tudinal section of the chicken which has not been soaked shows fibers 

 smaller than are the normal, glassy, smooth, with brilliant cross mark- 

 ings, blotchy staining, and sharply refractive outlines. Between 

 these tightly bound bundles are spaces sometimes considerably wider 

 than the bundles themselves and filled with a homogeneous, granular 

 material which stains light dirty green and which gives the appearance 

 of a finely divided amorphous precipitate. These masses are the 

 exudate from the degenerated fibers, and a very large part of almost 

 any field that one may select consists of such material. 



The whole tissue, even though very thinly cut, has a dense appear- 

 ance, and the usual translucency is much decreased. (Plate IX, 



% i.) 



The cross section of this tissue makes even more manifest the large 

 spaces devoted to the exuded degenerated substance. While the 

 individual fibers are, in most cases, distinct, the spaces between them 

 are small, so that the bundles themselves are compact but lie widely 

 separated by the exudate. The staining is irregular, the fibrillse 

 themselves, which are seen plainly on the cross section of fresh muscle, 

 are almost entirely invisible, a smooth glassy appearance now being 

 prevalent in the transversely cut fiber. (Plate IX, fig. 2.) 



The muscle which has been thawed by soaking shows, in longi- 

 tudinal section, a fiber almost twice the width of that which is 

 unsoaked, and the large masses of amorphous material are now 

 reduced to mere remnants which lie as a clear green mass of not very 

 tightly packed granules between the bundles of fibers. In many 

 cases it is difficult to find even these remnants and, while the indi- 

 vidual fibers are not tightly packed into small bundles as they are in 

 the fresh tissue, they are separated by only small spaces. 



The uneven staining of the fiber itself still holds and is more marked 

 than in the unsoaked portion of muscle. The tissue, as seen under 



