Page:The third Huxley lecture.pdf/26

22 small round spots, which interfered little with the pallor of the other structures. I at once saw that I had before me direct ocular evidence of an effect of the irritant upon the tissues. The circumstance that I had applied the mustard to one spot only of the web, had revealed what had escaped the notice of the many previous observers who had studied the circulation in the frog. I afterwards learned that changes of colour due to pigmentary variation had been observed in Germany in the green tree-frog by Yon Wittich, who had attributed them to contractions and relaxations of chromatophorous cells, more or less analogous to what is seen on a large scale, visible to the naked eye, in the skin of cephalopods. Yery different were the real pigmentary functions in the frog. The colouring matter, which was in the form of granules of extreme minuteness, was contained in cells with offsets that rapidly broke up into ramifications of exquisite delicacy, anastomosing freely with each other and with those of other branches and of neighbouring cells, only visible when the frog was at the darkest, when they appeared, under the highest magnifying power at my disposal (a fine $1⁄12$ of Powell and Lealand's), as fine homogeneous black lines, in which the closely-packed granules were not individually discernible. Under these circumstances the bodies of the cells and their principal offsets were so cleared of pigment as to be almost colourless, so that it was difficult to define their contour.