98 
STRUCTURE OF THE CYSTICERCUS CELLULOSE. 
parts are perfectly consolidated, their points of junction can 
be distinguished, and in other groups the fragments corre- 
sponding to those recently united can be recognised. Directly 
a hooklet is found, it is of its full dimension; and some of 
its parts are even larger and more clumsy-looking than in 
older hooklets. The substance of the particles entering into 
these organs, after they are once formed, undergoes no 
change in its microscopical characters, but is the same after 
as before their union. It is impossible to single out any one 
particle from the rest, which can be taken for the nucleus of 
a cell, or for what physiologists would call a nucleated cell ; 
and thus there is nothing which indicates that these organs 
have been formed by transformation of previously existing 
cells, but, on the contrary, there is every appearance that their 
formation is due to the simple coalescence of homogeneous 
molecules. 
Up to the present point, the facts which I have stated are 
so obvious, that their accuracy will, I think, not be ques- 
tioned ; also the interpretation of them is not only that 
which appears to me the most natural, but is almost self- 
evident. There remain, however, some considerations of a 
more theoretical kind, though not of less importance. It 
will be asked, how the entozoon, in its earliest condition, 
such as I have described it, finds access to the interior of a 
primary fasciculus. Before attempting to answer this ques- 
tion, I must observe that my description commences from a 
condition of this entozoon so complete, that no one, on ex- 
amining it in this state with the microscope, will deny its 
perfect similarity to those of the higher form. But there are 
other links in the chain which I must now consider, and 
which so far have been omitted only because I wished to 
keep that which is certain distinct from that which is pro- 
bable. Before the cells and molecules already described accu- 
mulate in sufficient quantity to present the undoubted 
character above mentioned, they are found aggregated in 
smaller groups, and even occurring individually in all the 
primary fasciculi of the diseased muscle; their quantity, and 
the size and form of these groups, present the greatest pos- 
sible irregularity in the different fasciculi. In some the 
molecular deposit looks like an early stage of fatty degene- 
ration, but it has characters very different; one is the shape 
of the molecules, which resemble in all respects those in the 
growing ends of an entozoon ; and another is, their situation, 
which seems to be between the primary fibrillae, tending 
to separate them longitudinally ; however that may be, it is 
an abnormal condition, and always coexistent with the higher 
