No. 634] SHORTER ARTICLES AND DISCUSSION 463 



the primitive surgery of Egypt. Ruffer in his extensive studies 

 into the histology of Egyptian mummies did not discover any 

 definite corpuscles. 



It may be of interest to note that Friedenthal 6 announced to 

 the physiological society of Berlin the discovery of red blood 

 in the body of a mammoth from eastern Siberia which had been 

 frozen in the tundra since Pleistocene times. The precipitin 

 reaction of the blood is similar to that of the modern elephant. 

 No record is made of the preservation of blood corpuscles. 

 While this is an extremely interesting discovery, it must be re- 

 called that cold brings many chemical reactions to a halt, and 

 there may have been little change in the blood of this mammoth 

 during its 175,000 years of cold, storage in the Siberian mud. 

 The body had been so well frozen that the flesh was still fresh 

 enough to satisfy the hunger of wolves and dogs. 



Hoppe-Seyler has shown that dried red blood corpuscles of 

 man contain 2.5 parts of cholesterin in 1000. While this is an 

 extremely small amount of lipoid substance, since it is chiefly 

 in the cortex of the corpuscle, it occurred to me that this might 

 offer an explanation of the preservation of blood corpuscles. 

 That is, under favorable conditions, the lipoids of the blood 

 might be changed into some resistant substance like palmitate 

 or cholesteryl stearate and thus retain the form of the cor- 

 puscles and delay their destruction long enough for fossiliza- 

 tion to set in ; these substances being replaced later by the min- 

 eral crystals from the magma in which the body was immersed. 

 The beautiful little ganoid fish brains described by the writer 7 

 some years ago from the Coal Measures may have been preserved 

 in a similar way. The resemblance between brain substance and 

 blood corpuscles is close in this respect that each has a small 

 amount of resistant substance, a large amount of water and a 

 relatively similar proportion of lipoids which may have become 

 transformed, under proper conditions, into resistant substances 

 which carried the part over the critical period of destruction. 



In view of the fact that so many soft-bodied animals are so 

 beautifully preserved in the rocks, that the histological nature 

 of Paleozoic muscle tissue has been determined, that bacteria 

 and the delicate parts of flowers are so frequently fossilized, it 



8 Deutsche Med. Wnchrnschrift, 1004, p. 901. 



Kansas, with a Review of other fossil Brains, J. Camp. Neurol., XXV, No. 2, 

 135, 17 figs. 



