ENTOZOON-LIKE BODIES. 
157 
for the other. But upon careful examination by the highest 
powers, it will be found that the outline is sharper, that the 
general mass is more uniform, while the alterations in form 
are greater than are observed in muscle -nuclei. More- 
over, these bodies are often seen in such great number (fifty 
or a hundred, or more, being in the field at one time), that 
they cannot be mistaken for nuclei. They are also smaller 
than the nuclei of muscle, and very much smaller than the 
greatly enlarged muscular nuclei seen in the muscles of 
animals destroyed by Cattle Plague. 
Upon the whole it seems to me almost certain that each of 
these little bodies is capable of giving rise to others like 
itself by division and sub-division, and these to more in 
the same way. To what extent this process is capable of being 
carried I can form no idea. The spindle-shaped elongated 
cysts in which these particles grow and multiply, sometimes 
reach a very great length. In a specimen of muscle I received 
from Dr. Bade of Norwich, I found two as much as a quarter 
of an inch in length, and yet so narrow that the muscular fibre 
in which they, lie still exhibits its normal diameter. Up to 
a certain size, however, as the bodies increase in length, they 
also increase in width; and I have seen some twice the 
diameter of a muscular fibre. In some of the largest of these 
the walls were not so thick as in many smaller ones which 
have fallen under my notice. From the facility with which 
the contents of many of these bodies escape, — very slight 
pressure of the thin glass being often sufficient to rupture the 
cyst, — I think it probable that if the aggregate mass had 
attained the size somewhat larger than those delineated in my 
drawings, the sac would have burst, and thus hundreds of thou- 
sands of the small oval bodies would haye beeu set free among 
the vessels, nerves, and connective tissue, lying between the 
elementary muscular fibres. But this is only an opinion, 
and at present I have no data to enable me to decide what 
becomes of these particles supposing them to be set free. 
The death of the animal always sterns to occur before this 
catastrophe happens. There is, however, another mode of 
escape of the bodies contained in these spindle-shaped cysts 
that is possible. Although I have never seen a distinct pore 
or aperture in any part of the cysts, it seems not improbable 
that an orifice might be formed at one or other extremity, or 
at a point of the body where the external wall is thinner than 
in other parts. In this way the escape of these bodies from 
their parent cyst, a few at a time, would be effected, while the 
process of multiplication still going on within would not be 
interfered with. But whether the individual masses are able 
to migrate from one part of the body to another, or, after 
