The principal features to be noted are its very definite crescentic shape; the probable existence of a delicate limiting membrane; the presence of needle-shaped hæmozoin particles, usually about the centre of the parasite, though sometimes nearer one end; and a bow-like and exceedingly delicate line that, springing from a point somewhat inside the rounded-off tips of the horns of the crescent, bridges its concavity. Manifestly this bow represents the outline of the remains of the blood corpuscle in
Fig. 5. Malaria parasite: the crescent body; stained. (x 1,000.)
which the parasite had developed. In many instances, especially in stained specimens, the continuation of the red blood-corpuscle can be distinctly traced around the convexity of the crescent. This circumstance, together with the fact that the material included by the bow, and also occasionally seen as a delicate, sometimes slightly jagged fringe around the convexity of the crescent, gives the staining reactions of hæmoglobin, proves that this form of the malaria parasite, like the ordinary amœboid bodies already described, is also intracorpuscular. Slight differences, particularly as regards
