oaiGIN OF RED BLOOD-CORPUSCLES. 349 
part of the same. In this respect heemoglobin behaves 
like fat, or like vitellin granules, or starch, &c. It might 
be even more exactly compared to chlorophyll, which some- 
times appears in the midst of the cellular substance, and 
sometimes in solution in the body of the cell itself.^ 
Sometimes, in fact, the haemoglobin appears stored up in 
the cell (leucocytes of Semmer, cells of lymphatic glands), 
and at other times diffused throughout the whole body of 
the cell, only in proportion as the substitution is more and 
more complete the cell body loses more and more its vital 
properties, properly so called ; it becomes inactive, and the 
nucleus disappears. Soon the whole is nothing but the 
wreck of a cell. 
It appears, at the same time, that as more and more 
haemoglobin is formed this living matter cannot continue to 
exist and disappears, and, as a consequence, the cell, which 
is reduced merely to the haemoglobin which is deposited in 
it, is able to dissolve in the plasma, and so disappear. 
All this tends to show that haemoglobin is a very 
secondary product of the organism, and it would not be 
astonishing if this body, which results from extraordinary 
complex chemical actions going on in the blood plasma, 
were sometimes to form and be deposited in cells, properly 
so called. 
As to the first appearance of the globulets in the midst of 
the blood plasma, it is not really more surprising than that 
of the fibres which appear in the same plasma when drawn 
from the vessels — fibres which, it must be remembered, have 
a definite morphological character. 
To the globulet thus formed of albuminous substance 
(globulin) there is soon added a crystalline substance, or at 
least a substance having certain characters which belong to 
crystalline substances (haemoglobin), and it is to this that 
the increase in volume is due. Such an increase of volume 
is, therefore, not a case of development in its technical sense, 
but simply a growth comparable to that of a group of bodies 
similarly formed by the union of albuminous compounds and 
cystalline compounds, which M. Halting and others have 
studied so carefully. 
To sum up, it must be admitted that the origin of the 
haematids among adult mammals has not as yet been com- 
pletely made out. Anatomists are divided between two 
* “ It sometimes happens (among algsc) that the whole protoplasmic mass 
is coloured green excepting the most internal layer, the membranous layer, 
and certain isolated spots (many Zoosporae, Palmellacece, gonidia of lichens.’* 
Sachs. 
