ARTICULAR CARTILAGE. 
153 
immediately beneath the epiphysis is whiter than the 
rest ; this is the non- vascular lamella before alluded to, 
and no vessels pass through it to supply the cartilage. 
All the vessels of foetal cartilage run in canals. In the 
early stage of embryonic existence, as Mr. Toynbee has 
demonstrated, the cartilage has deep notches or indenta- 
tions for their reception, and at a later period of growth 
the canals are still visible in the interior. In a section 
from the head of the humerus of a human foetus, the 
vessels, Fig. 117, d, are very numerous and irregular in 
their outline. If any one of them be accurately focussed, 
it will be seen enclosed in a tube or canal. The vessels 
themselves are small in comparison with the canal in 
which they run, but other vessels may be noticed in the 
neighbourhood, which are so distended as to fill the 
entire canal. 
In healthy adult articular cartilage, there are no 
vessels ; but in morbid conditions of the same tissue, 
vessels occasionally become more or less numerous. 
The latest period of life at which I have discovered 
vessels in healthy cartilage is twelve years. 
In the specimen before represented in Fig. 114, a, 
which is a vertical section of the head of a metacarpal 
bone of an adult, the vessels of the shaft of the bone 
could be traced until they reached the yellowish band, 
or the non- vascular, or articular amelia, and here 
they ended in loops. The cartilage in this specimen 
is distinguished from the lamella by being whiter and 
much more transparent. The lamella is even present 
