between

a feeling of reserve grew up the mother and child, and, though years have come and gone, and the child is grown up to womanhood, she still remembers that dreadful day; not, however, with any undue blame to her mother, "for," she said, "I know she thought she was doing right."

Oh, what a feeling of forlorn wretchedness must come over a little innocent child when it sees its mother looking with suspicious eyes upon it, and refusing to believe its expressions of innocence!

Oh, mothers! let your children see that you have faith in them; that you can trust them whether near or far away, and it will be to them a cheering thought that will doubly endear to

them the sacred name of motherchecking them in temptation's hour, and leading their souls to lofty purposes and noble aspirations.

A mother's love and trusting beliefwhat a safeguard it has been to many a boy fighting his way in the world! It has helped him to conquer many an enemy, and brightened many an hour of struggle and sadness to know that a loving, praying mother has faith in her absent boy. A mother's trust has kept many a daughter's feet from straying, and bound their hearts together in affectionate sympathy and confidence. until death alone has broken the tie, and then was left the sweet influence of a devoted life as a guiding star. Mothers, have faith in your children!

SARAH KEABLES HUNT.

THE

TO THE EDITOR OF THE PHRENOLOGICAL JOURNAL:

S

As it is not often that I indulge my

self in critical communications to the JOURNAL, I trust you will permit me to review one or two of your propositions in the April number, in which you devote considerable space to Dr. Flint's voluminous "Text-book on Human Physiology;" not in the way of defense of the doctor as a microscopist, for his volume on the "Nervous System," the only one I have carefully read, shows very clearly that he is not a practical master of the instrument; but, on the other hand, for the purpose of laying some original investigations before the scientific world, which tend to the conclusion that the older microscopists were not so far from right in their views as to the

RED.

origin of leucocytes as it is now fashionable to suppose.

In my own experiments I employ the highest powers of my instrument-600, 850, and 1,100 diameters. Taking care to adjust the stage so that it is exactly level, as a preliminary, and to make all due preparations as to light, focal distance, and so on, with an extra slip of the same thickness as the one I am about to use, which is being heated to a degree sufficient to destroy all organic matter, I draw a drop of blood from my finger in the ordinary manWhile I am doing this, the slip and its covers are cooling under a bell glass. At blood heat I bring the middle of the slip in contact with the drop which is oozing from my finger; cover it, and press down the cover with the tip of the finger,

ner.

armed, for the purpose of excluding oily substances, with a strip of clean cambric, until the light is readily transmitted through it. At a power of 1,100 the blood is seen to be composed of lymph granules, perfectly round and uniform, white corpuscles (leucocytes), and red corpuscles or hematics. The first are very numerous, of the uniform diameter of about 1-1200 of a millimeter, and have a peculiar consensual movement very difficult to describe, that causes them to move about in their narrow streams meandering across the field. This circulation is best observed with the larger field that a power of 600 diameters affords, and continues for about five minutes. The fully-developed white corpuscles have the appearance of large nucleated or non-nucleated lymph gran. ules, and vary in diameter from 1-350 to 1-100 of a millimeter. The red are a little smaller, and vary a little less-say from 1-450 to 1-200 of a millimeter. The leucocytes are not always or often nucleated, although dilute acetic acid speedily develops such an appearance; but tests with ammoniacal solutions of carmine always show a difference in constitution between the center and the periphery, by developing a red spot in the interior of the body. Red corpuscles, suspended in balsam, and subjected to a light heat, generally exhibit a marked tendency to symmetrical selfdivision into six parts, just as one cuts a round cake, and these parts are organically so distinct and regular that it is impossible to regard the division as an accidental phenomenon. I have never seen red blood-cells dividing, but I am inclined to think that such spontaneous division actually occurs. Under similar conditions the white corpuscles separate into groups of symmetrical granules, differing in no particular from the lymph granules, the consensual movements of which I have just mentioned. That is to say, they are decomposable into granular components.

The question whether they originate or may originate from a granular blastema is one that I have no hesitation in deciding in the affirmative, although, of course, your reviewer is justified in following the latest

received authorities. I have seen them produced in that manner, not only now and then, but very frequently, and have observed the process in its inception as well as in its completion. In a word, the question is purely one of fact, upon which a man should have no opinion at all unless he has ocular evidence for it. I have a dozen drawings of leucocytes in different stages of organization, in which the granules are arranging themselves into component bodies generally in threes, or fives, or sevens, or nines, or elevens, or thirteens, or fifteens; never in even numbers. The most frequent numbers are five, nine, and fifteen. By making a weak solution of hypophosphite of ammonia, and introducing a little of it under the cover before pressing it down, the process I have just been describing can be very appreciably stimulated, and hence observed with more certainty of decisive results. The variations in diameter and in the apparent nucleation of leucocytes are, I am inclined to think, due to the number and arrangement of the granules, and furnish no certain or even proximate indications of age or stage of development. In my studies of the blood of fishes I have always found that the formation of the corpuscles from the plasma could be more readily followed than when the blood was taken from my own circulation; and I have often, in the lower animals, observed the granules of a corpuscle in rapid molecular action.

There is no doubt, therefore, as a matter of fact, that white blood corpuscles, in many instances at least, are generated in the blood plasma-one positive observation is conclusive against a hundred theoretical dissertations. I have not only seen them forming, and counted the granules and noted their arrangement in numerous experiments, but have also observed them in every stage of formation from a state in which the granules are highly visible as independent and active components, to the final state in which a thin pellicle operates to obliterate all optical evidence of granular constitution. There are such abundant sources of error in this field, however, that one is excusable for blundering a little.

In consumptive persons, for example, one frequently finds a white matter existing in abundance in the form of spherules of from 1-150 to 1-100 of a millimeter in diameter, and corpuscles of a peculiar kind occur in the splenic and supra- renal veins. Purous and mucous corpuscles, again, are not specially distinguishable from blood corpuscles, and the former have generally been held to be indentical with them. There is, however, this material difference between corpuscles taken from blood and those taken from an abscess or from a sore during the suppurating process, namely, that when mounted in the ordinary manner blood corpuscles are tolerably permanent, while purous and mucous corpuscles granulate in from twenty-four to thirty-six hours; conclusive evidence that the received view is erroneous.

Again, as to the cause of the attraction in color produced by oxygen, nervous blood having a bluish tint, and arterial blood a scarlet one, I have, although very reluctantly, to dissent from the views of Heule, Nasse, Harless, and I can not say how many more. The hematin (coloring and colored matter) of a red corpuscle constitutes about 5-100 of the mass; the globulin (cell-wall) about 65-100. In blood taken from an animal after death I have always found that the hematin refracts light a little less clearly than in experiments with living blood; and the consequence is that the cell-wall, though really colorless, is apparently a blue pellicle enveloping a dull red central mass. In venous blood the same phenomenon is apparent in a less degree. The fact that carbonic acid appears to operate to produce a convexity of the corpuscles, which previously appeared to be concave, taken in connection with the preceding facts, seems to sustain Heule's view; but, in further investigation, a cause less dependent on purely optical principles presents itself. Hematin, when burned, yields a considerable percentage of peroxide of iron. Now, there is scarcely a better test of the presence of carbonic acid in large quantities in the atmosphere of an apartment than peroxide of iron. A piece of paper saturated with it in solution,

when immersed in carbonic acid gas, assumes a dull bluish red hue, which, on exposure to free oxygen, is rapidly converted into an opaque scarlet by the oxidation of the carbonic acid. That is to say, a body containing an appreciable quantity of soluble peroxide of iron readily absorbs carbonic acid under the proper conditions, and darkens-for the presence of the bluish tint is only a symbol for diminished refracting properties-while on exposure to free oxygen it gives off the carbonic acid and recovers its scarlet. This function of the peroxide is, let me remark, altogether independent of the question. whether it is wholly responsible for the color of the blood; for, after extracting it as thoroughly as possible, the red corpuscles redden alcohol intensely by simply boiling them in it. The fact, however, that dilute muriatic acid turns the corpuscles white, while dilute carbonic acid renders them dark and opaque, is pretty conclusive evidence that the peroxide is mainly the seat of color; and I am sure that, on careful consideration, you will agree with me, even against the weight of authority, that Heule's view is an erroneous one, and that the peroxide of iron, as an ingredient of the hematin, is the seat of the familiar alteration in color as to which our venerable doctor is so much in the dark.

And this brings me to a view I have long entertained, but have never ventured to express, as to the function of the red corpuscles in the animal economy. In a general way their higher development accompanies the less diffused respiratory organization of the higher types of the animal kingdom. They are present in a few fishes, as, for example, in the squatina, with a diameter of about 1-50 of a millimeter. In the siren, their so-called nuclei show from twenty to thirty spherical granules, and in the lower animals generally their nuclei appear to project in a rounded form. But I have never been able to find any conclusive evidence of their nucleation in the higher mammalia, although dilute acetic acid develops granules in the center in abundance. I have seen them occasionally in the circulating plasma of the fly,

but never in that of any other insect. Their number in the human race varies with sex to such an extent that their proportion in the blood of a man averages about 140 to the 1,000 parts, but may be as high as 186 or as low as 110 without ill-health, while in women the average is about 112, but the number may fall as low as 71 or range as high as 167. Open air life augments their number, while sedentary habits diminish it. Their average diameter, like that of the white corpuscles, varies materially in different temperaments, being less in the blood of persons of nervous temperament, and greatest in those of glandular and vital temperament. In all the lower animals they bear a strong resemblance to Barry's embryonic corpuscles; but, as the investigation ascends higher and higher in the animal kingdom, the resemblance is gradually obliterated. Now, my view is that they are excreto-respiratory in their function. That is to say, they absorb the carbonic acid element evolved in the decomposition of tissues, and carry it to the

lungs, where, in contact with free oxygen, it is exhaled as an excretion. Hence their convex and swollen appearance in venous blood, and their concave and collapsed state when taken from an artery. That they perform this function the facts conclusively show. But I will not, by any means, insist that they have no other, having long since learned to be wary of theorizing.

In conclusion, gentlemen, I trust you will pardon my dissent from your views and from those of the eminent authorities you have quoted. Believe me, I should not have troubled you with a dissent based upon mere theoretical grounds, and I have tried to give a brief but faithful transcript of the leading facts that I have gathered through a long series of original investigations, hoping that they might serve to assist physiologists at large in arriving at some coherent theory of the function of the red corpuscles and the origin of the leucocytes or true organizing corpuscles of the blood. Very respectfully yours,

FRANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD.

NE

EARLY three years ago several gentleman of our village concluded to organize a Town Library. As the most feasible plan, we placed the value of each share at $5, payable in cash or in books suitable for the library. Each stockholder was entitled to the use of two books, or one book and one periodical, on loan at a time. The library is kept open all day Saturday, on which day exchanges of books take place, and all persons not shareholders have the privilege of consulting and reading the books, periodicals, and newspapers.

Each shareholder pays $2 per year, or fifty cents per quarter to pay for incidental expenses, including hall rent, librarian's fees, and fuel, etc. We take ten periodicals, which we purchase of Messrs. S. R. Wells & Co., at reduced rates.

We have now accumulated a considerable library of about 1,500 volumes, besides 300 volumes of periodicals, stitched to

gether after they become six months old. What surprised me most was the large number of valuable and useful books that were paid in on shares. We have 140 shareholders, all of whom paid in books except about 20 shares which were paid in cash. We find that novels, travels, poets, and periodicals are most in demand; occasionally works of science and biographies are also read. We have increased our library by donations, concerts, and lectures, and regard the institution as an established educator and moralizer of our people.

I am persuaded that there are abundant books lying unused in every community which could be collected and organized into a village library, if a few energetic and literary people would but give them time and make the effort. To promote that object and indicate the method most certain of success, I contribute these hasty suggestions and history of our operations.

O. 8. PARTON.