338 
PROFESSOR POUCHET. 
noticed in the group of camels i (Camelus and Auchenia), 
where it appears to be universal. 
Glohulets . — There is in the blood a third kind of element, 
which anatomists as well as medical men have almost com- 
pletely ignored, and to which M. Hayem has lately suddenly 
drawn attention. These elements were discovered by Donne in 
1838, and it seems only right to preserve for them the name^ 
of the French microscopist who discovered them. In 1846, 
a German doctor, Zimmerman, blames his fellow country- 
men for forgetting in descriptions of the blood, the globulets 
of Donne, and proposes to call them elementary corpuscles 
(elementare Korperchen). Although described again by M. 
Robin, they have remained almost altogether ignored, or else 
confounded with the various amorphic granules always 
to be found in the blood. 
M. Hayem has given to these bodies the name haemato- 
blasts, and has since described them in rather a summary 
manner, omitting certain points which seem extremely 
important. I believe I was the first to give an exact descrip- 
tion of them. 
These bodies are really chiefly remarkable for the precise 
morphological character which distinguishes them from 
simple granulations. Zimmerman was not after all so much 
mistaken about this as Donne and others ; he called them 
corpuscles. 
They are elongated, and, except in the very smallest, one 
diameter is much longer than the other. They are slightly 
refractive, they appear homogeneous, they are devoid of 
nucleus, and are unacted upon by staining reagents (?). 
On the contrary, they approach in their physico-chemical 
characters the substance of the body of leucocytes. This 
analogy is even more striking.^ 
1 Upon what biological peculiarity does the form of the haematids in these 
animals depend ? The problem appears to be hard to resolve in the present 
state of science. The ancestors of this group of mammals appear to be 
indigenous in regions of the globe, such as the Andes and the plain of 
Central Asia, where the depression of the barometer is considerable. This 
form of hsematid appears to us to indicate a special property of haemoglobin. 
Among fishes, the Syngnathians have regularly nucleated discoidal 
haematids like those of mammals, whilst other Lophobranchs have them 
extremely elongated and fusiform. 
G. E. llindfleisch has recently stated that the form of the haematids is 
only the consequence of their rubbing one against the other in the serum ; 
the context is sufficient to show what this singular hypothesis is worth. 
2 The French word, used by Donne, was not ‘ globulet,’ but ‘globulin.’ 
— Tuansl. 
3 This analogy would lead one to suppose that the globulets were derived 
from the body of the leucocytes. One might bring forward to defend 
