T. GoodeV and A. W. Weldings 
547 
Our films show that when the salivary corpuscles undergo dissolu¬ 
tion in the saliva and in any situation in the mouth, their cytoplasm 
becomes coarsely granular in appearance, and is finally ruptured and 
thrown off from the nuclei which may remain with fragments of cyto¬ 
plasm attached to them, or may be left completely naked. The nuclei 
also stain in a great variety of ways. Some of them appear to swell 
up and only stain faintly, others seem to remain normal in size, and 
some apparently shrink a little and are stained an intense black with 
iron-haematoxylin. The majority of them appear to become prac¬ 
tically homogeneous in structure. 
Not all the nuclear lobes of a given corpuscle behave in the same 
way, one portion may be pale and the other or others quite black. 
The series of drawings shown in PI. XXI, fig. 14 a-m gives a small 
selection of disintegrating salivary corpuscles and their products taken 
from films of saliva and tonsillar smears. 
A comparison of these with the accompanying drawings^of amoebae 
with their ingesta will at once show the identity of the bodies in ques¬ 
tion. It would be easy to multiply the drawings indefinitely and so 
accumulate still more evidence in support of our suggestion, but we 
think that the figures given are sufficient to illustrate our point. 
Salivary and tonsillar smears stained by other methods than 
iron-haematoxylin, as for example with Giemsa’s or Tenner’s stains, 
also point conclusively in favour of the explanation we have 
advanced. 
It is easy to see how, with the extrusion of salivary corpuscles and ’ 
their subsequent disintegration always going on, a supply of their 
nuclear remains can accumulate in the mouth, on the gums or at the 
bases of the teeth, in fact at any point where a suitable lodgment can 
be found, and how the amoebae are continually furnished with fresh 
supplies of food by this means. 
Our explanation of the nature of these bodies is at once simple and 
feasible. It is, further, easy to understand the extreme prevalence of 
the bodies among the ingesta of the amoebae, and at the same time 
shows that the organism is of no pathogenic significance, but is on the 
other hand a scavenger of naturally occurring waste nuclear material 
together with bacteria occurring in the mouth. It may therefore be 
considered as a useful rather than a harmful organism. 
As has been mentioned earlier, previous investigators have suggested 
the leucocytic nature and origin of the ingesta under discussion but the 
point which we make and one that has not been suggested before is 
Parasitology rx. 
36 
