DISTRIBUTION, OCCURRENCE AND APPEARANCE 
5 
Distribution, Occurrence and Appearance 
Even a cursory inspection of hundreds of carcasses in the large abat- 
toirs confirmed the statement that the lumbar subvertebral region is the 
place in which the hemolymph nodes of the sheep are by far the most 
numerous, and that their occurrence near the renal arteries has been 
over-emphasized. Since the lumbar region is especially accessible, these 
nodes were chosen as the object of special study. In all except very fat 
sheep they lie exposed to view, and can always be recognized as a whole, 
even if not individually, as hemolymph nodes by the unaided eye. Hard- 
ening the tissue containing them in formaline, as stated by Warthin [31 1 , 
did not, in my experience, make them any more conspicuous. Moreover, 
since their conspicuousness in the fresh state is due to the contained 
blood, any fixing or hardening agent which does not increase the color 
contrast between fresh blood and the fat in which they lie can, in the 
nature of things, not make them more conspicuous except in so far as 
shrinkage of the surrounding tissues makes them more prominent. 
Neither did formaline help materially in distinguishing very small nodes 
from punctiform hemorrhages, since it affected both alike, even if not to 
a like degree. 
Even if they be small, a reasonably accurate count of the hemolymph 
nodes can, however, be made without difficulty in most cases in the fresh 
state. From careful counts in several dozen carcasses, supplemented by 
inspection of several thousand more, it was found that in sheep of mixed 
breeds the number of nodes in the lumbar sub-vertebral region varied 
from a few to at most fifty or sixty nodes. Although, to be sure, averages 
can mean little because of the great fluctuations which exist, a fair aver- 
age number in this region in young sheep, according to my observations, 
would be twenty to thirty nodes. The total number in the whole animal 
varied, however, from half a dozen to a hundred and fifty nodes in ex- 
ceptional cases. Three or four hundred nodes of macroscopic size, as 
estimated by Robertson [24] and confirmed later by Warthin [34] as an 
average number, were never found, in the entire body, including the 
viscera, even in the most exceptional cases. It is possible, to be sure, 
that there are breeds or conditions which justify the above estimates ; 
but all evidence obtained in mixed breeds of Merino, Shropshire and 
Southdown — and just sheep — in the East, in the Middle States, and in 
the West, makes this supposition very improbable. 
In foetuses near term, in several dozen new-born and in four lambs 
four weeks to six months old, for example, in which a careful examina- 
tion of the fat in all regions was made with the aid of a hand lens, a 
