Mr. Goodsir on Vegetable Organisms in the Stomach. 125 



Nautili have never since been found floating in troops, nor 

 exercising the bold familiarity, above-mentioned, of walking 

 into the fisherman's nets. 



The natural history of this mollusk is important to the 

 zoologist, but far more so to the geologist. The mysterious 

 nature of those polythalamous tenants of a former world, the 

 Ammonites and their multifarious congeners, is at length de- 

 monstrated by the discovery of the Nautilus, a solitary living 

 remnant, proving that the vast assemblage of those organic 

 remains so abundant in our secondary formations must have 

 belonged to animals who once dwelt in full activity and 

 vigour at the bottom of the ocean, constructing a discoidal 

 shell by force of gravity, and hermetically sealing the vacated 

 portion of it as they increased in bulk, to give them buoyancy 

 under the surrounding pressure*. 



XXIII. — History of a Case in which a Fluid periodically 

 ejected from the Stomach contained Vegetable Organisms of 

 an undescribed form. By John Goodsir, Esq., Conser- 

 vator of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh f. 



The case detailed by Mr. Goodsir is that of a young man, aged 19, 

 who had laboured for four months under stomach complaint, ac- 

 companied with the ejection of a peculiar acid fluid from the stomach. 

 The fluid passed from the stomach every morning without any effort 

 of vomiting. On examining the ejected fluid with the microscope, 

 peculiar organisms were detected, in the form of square or slightly 

 oblong plates. " The flat surfaces were divided into four secondary 

 squares by two rectilinear transparent spaces, which, passing from 

 side to side, intersected one another in the centre, like two cross 

 garden-walks. Each of the four secondary squares was again divided 

 by similarly arranged, but more feebly developed spaces, into four 

 ternary squares. The sixteen ternary squares thus constituted, when 

 examined with deeper powers, were seen to consist each of four 

 cells, which were not separated by transparent spaces, but simply by 

 dissepiments formed by the conjunction of the walls of contiguous 

 cells. These sixty-four cells, of which the organism consisted, did 

 not present in perfect individuals distinct nuclei." The whole or- 

 ganism had the appearance of a wool-pack, or of a soft bundle bound 

 with cord, crossing it four times at right angles and at equal di- 

 stances : hence Mr. Goodsir gives it the name of Sarcina. He con- 

 siders it to be of a vegetable nature, and to be allied to some of the 



* "The Nautilus," says Prof. Owen, "is the living, and perhaps sole 

 living archetype of a vast tribe of organized beings, whose fossilized remains 

 testify their existence at a remote period, and in another order of things." 



f From the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, No. 151. 



