284 Dr. Barry's Remarks on the Article " Ovum" 



the following year representing cells, the membranes of which, 

 like that of the germ vesicle, presented in the situation of the 

 nucleolus an orifice^, I lately wrote, " In mere nuclei, too, it 

 is often seen that at the very part where the nucleolus lies the 

 nucleal investment ceases t-^' My belief, indeed, is, that at 

 some period every nucleus has in its nucleolus a pore. 



I am anxious to poiut out a connexion between nucleoli and 

 pores, because of what I have for years been endeavouring to 

 prove, — that in absorption, assimilation, reproduction and secre- 

 tion, the nucleolus is the prime mover. 



But other pores exist, as pointed out by Keber — spaces 

 between the filaments and scales, far more capacious than 

 nucleoli ; which larger pores I do not suppose to represent more 

 than passages. 



II. Remarks on the Article " Ovum " in the Cyclopedia of 

 Physiology. 



I am glad to see from what has just been published^ of this 

 luminous and comprehensive article, that the observations of its 

 excellent author enable him to confirm my own, published 

 sixteen years before (in the Phil. Trans, for 1838), that the germ 

 vesicle is the part which first arrives at full formation, and that 

 my ovisac is formed around it J. Still more gratifying would it 

 have been to find that Prof. Allen Thomson was aware of some 

 observations I published three years afterwards — Phil. Trans. 

 1841 ; for, besides establishing the two facts just mentioned, as 

 published in 1838, my later ones enabled me to record the first 

 with far more minuteness, as well as to make known several 

 others. Of the drawings I gave in 1841, the Professor was 

 evidently not aware, or he would have seen that they represent 

 Nature even more accurately than his own. They not only show 

 the order of formation of the parts in question, but also that 

 what he terms granules are nucleolated nuclei. They further show 

 that these nuclei lay the foundation of the membrane of the ovi- 

 sac. I have only to add, that, buried as my said drawings of 

 1841 have been with a host of others, in a memoir, the title of 

 which did not denote connexion with the ovum, I am not sur- 

 prised at the oversight. I have exhumed a few of the said 

 drawings ; and it is these that I reproduce in Plate II. {figs. A 

 to F). 



Once more referring to these drawings, I have now more fully 

 to explain them. In figs. C to E, c is the germ vesicle with its 



♦ Phil. Trans. 1841. 



t Monthly Journal of Medical Science, July, 1854. 

 X The ovisac acquires a vascular covering, and there is thus formed a 

 "Graafian follicle." M. Barrv, Phil. Trans. 1838. 



