supporting lamella

530 W. B. HARDY.
singularly hyaline and structureless even with the highest
powers; they do not stain at all with picro-carmine or hsematoxylin,
but take a deep tinge with aniline blue and methyl
green.
They are of a complex character chemically, with probably
a proteid basis. That they are not wholly proteid is, I think,
shown by the fact that the coloration obtained with the xanthoproteic
reaction, and with acidulated ferrocyanide of potassium
and ferric chloride, is never intense though it is sufficiently
distinct. Neither iodine nor iodine and sulphuric acid give
distinctive results. They are also not of a fatty nature, for
exposure for many hours to hot turpentine fails to materially
change them. These are not only the most abundant, but
the most permanent nutritive spheres.
The second class of bodies is markedly distinct from those
just mentioned, and they occur sometimes in considerable
abundance. They are perhaps most noticeable at the close of
a digestive act. They measure as a rule 12 /x in diameter,
and are spherical bodies, each embedded in a vacuole of a
vacuolate cell, which may or may not contain at the same time
the small nutritive spheres. Like the latter they are sometimes
homogeneous bodies showing no internal structure,
and then they stain very intensely with picro-carmine (fig.
27). But they may be also found composed half of intensely
staining homogeneous material, and half of more turbid
material which stains scarcely at all (fig. 28). In yet other
cases the intensely staining material is reduced to a small
spherical nodule or patch placed excentrically on the surface
of the sphere. There can be no doubt that these are various
stages in the formation or destruction of the same bodies, but
I do not think that the evidence at my disposal justifies me in
deciding which stage is which. As a general rule, however, the
smallest of these bodies, perhaps but little larger than the firstmentioned
type of nutritive sphere, are homogeneous and deeply
staining, while without exception the largest forms are those
with the deeply-staining material reduced to an excentrically
placed bleb. These bodies resemble in some respects the yolk