Contractility of texture always takes place in the cellular system when extension ceases. Thus in emaciation, in the resolution of dropsy and of tumours, the cells contract and lose a great part of the capacity they had acquired; in a wound which has affected the cellular texture as well as the skin, the edges separate, and a space remains between them owing to the contraction of the cells. As we advance in life, this contractility takes place with less ease; youth is the period of its greatest energy; thus in consequence of great emaciation that takes place in old men, the skin is flaccid and wrinkled, because the subjacent cellular texture not having contracted, the cutaneous covering remains at some distance from the external organs and cannot lie close to them. In a young man, on the contrary, who has become emaciated, the skin is exactly applied to the organs, it preserves its tension; because the cells in contracting draw it with them; these form the external prominences. It is necessary to observe these prominences; in the face, with the folds of the skin, they form what are called prominent features. II. _Vital Properties._ The animal properties are not among the attributes of the cellular texture in an ordinary state; we can with impunity cut it, draw it in different directions or distend it with gas. An animal that undergoes these experiments gives no indication of suffering. If he feels any pain, it is from the nervous filaments that pass through the texture, and which may be accidentally irritated. In disease however, the sensibility is raised to such a point, that it may become the seat of acute pain; phlegmon is a proof of this. The organic properties are very distinct in the cellular texture; fat and serum could not be absorbed there, if they did not make an impression that brings into action organic sensibility. I would observe concerning this property considered in the cellular system, that all substances have not an equal relation to it; among the animal fluids the blood, the lymph and milk do not raise it so high, when they are effused or injected there, as to prevent absorption, which takes place of them as well as of fat and serum. On the other hand this sensibility is so altered by the contact of urine, bile, saliva or other fluids destined to be thrown out, that inflammation is often the consequence, and prevents absorption. Among the foreign fluids injected water is absorbed. Wine and almost all other irritating fluids excite suppuration, and are thrown out with the pus that arises from them. We know that in the operation for hydrocele, abscesses in the scrotum are always the consequence of an accidental passage of the injection into the cellular texture. Experiments upon living animals agree perfectly with this fact; every other irritating fluid, diluted acids, alkaline solutions, &c. produce the same phenomenon.