338 Prof. Farmer, Messrs. Moore and Walker. [Nov. 17, 



contains masses of secretion, and these constitute elements commonly known 

 as goblet cells. In between the cells of such a rectal epithelium are always 

 to be sfien a few wandering elements which are apparently migrating from 

 the submucous into the mucous layer and vice versd. Their number is, 

 however, very limited, and they either resemble the white corpuscles of the 

 blood, or their nuclei exhibit a lobed appearance which seems to represent a 

 stage of fragmentation. 



In the processes of the submucous layer which interdigitate with the 

 crypts, we find, in the first place, a kind of framework or loose scaffolding 

 of intestinal connective tissue, between the strands and sheets of which can 

 be seen the loops of the anastomosing rectal arteries and veins. Within and 

 without this region, but especially in the centre of the projections of the 

 submucosa, vast numbers of lymph bodies are always conspicuous, the 

 central mass or core of the latter marking the termination of the irregular 

 lymph sinuses and vessels (fig. 1, h). 



Amongst the columnar cells of the mucous layer during states of ordinary 

 activity we occasionally encounter nuclei in various stages of ordinary 

 mitosis. More rarely nuclei in process of fragmentation or amitosis may be 

 seen. Neither kind of division is frequent, and the tissue seems to be merely 

 regenerating itself by the replacement of individual cells as fast as these 

 disappear. Amongst the leucocytes and lymph bodies, as well as occasionally 

 amongst the connective tissue corpuscles, division is also plainly to be 

 discerned. The nuclei of the connective tissue elements divide mitotically, 

 whilst in the leucocytes we meet both with true mitosis and with those 

 peculiar forms of leucocytic fragmentation that have already been described 

 and figured by other writers, and are generally well recognised. Wherever we 

 light upon true mitotic figures, whether in the mucous cells, in the connective 

 tissue elements, or in the lymph bodies, the phases of division invariably 

 agree with the type of mitosis characteristic of the non-reproductive 

 portions of the body. They are typically somatic or premaiotic* In every 

 mitosis of this nature the chromosomes emerge from the resting nucleus 

 in the form of elongated or bent rods, and in the ordinary premaiotic 

 number (32). 



During the stage of the equatorial plate each of them is easily seen to be 

 longitudinally split, the two halves passing respectively to the opposite poles 

 of the spindle to contribute to the formation of the two daughter nuclei. 

 Under ordinary conditions the above cytological conditions and appearances 

 remain unchanged in the rectum. 



* See Farmer and Moore, " On the Maiotic Phase (Reduction Divisions) in Animals and 

 Plants," ' Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci.,' vol. 48. 



