1 30 Royal Society. 



of the uterine nerves in preparations furnished by the author, which 

 tend to corroborate his views. 



May 7 — " On the Anatomy and Physiology of the Vascu- 

 lar Fringes in Joints, and the Sheaths of Tendons." By George 

 Rainey, Esq., M.R.C.S. Communicated by John Simon, Esq., 

 F.R.S., Assistant-Surgeon to the King's College Hospital, and De- 

 monstrator of Anatomy in King's College, London. 



It has been generally believed that the folds of synovial mem- 

 brane which project into the articular cavities in the form of fringes, 

 contain merely globules of fat, and are subservient only to the me- 

 chanical offices of filling up spaces that would otherwise be left 

 vacant during the movements of the joints. By a careful examina- 

 tion of their real structure with the aid of the microscope, the au- 

 thor has found that they present an arrangement of vessels quite 

 peculiar to themselves, and bearing no resemblance whatever to 

 that of the vessels which secrete fat ; together with an epithelium, 

 remarkable by its form and disposition, and characteristic of organs 

 endowed with the function of a special secretion. He has traced 

 the presence of these synovial fringes in all cavities which contain 

 synovia ; that is to say, not only in the joints, but also in the sheaths 

 of tendons, and in the bursa? mucosae. When well-injected, they are 

 seen, under the microscope, to consist of two parts ; namely, a con- 

 volution of blood-vessels, and an investing epithelium. These con- 

 voluted vessels do not enclose, by their anastomoses, spaces like 

 those capillaries which secrete fat, and which are of a much smaller 

 size than the former ; and the epithelial investments, besides en- 

 closing separately each packet of convoluted vessels, sends off from 

 each tubular sheath secondary processes of various shapes, into 

 which no blood-vessels enter. The lamina itself, forming these 

 folds and processes, consists of a very thin membrane studded with 

 flattish oval cells, a little larger than blood-corpuscles, but destitute 

 of nucleus or nucleoli ; presenting none of the characters of tes- 

 sellated epithelium, but corresponding more to what Mr. Goodsir 

 has termed germinal membrane. From all these facts the author 

 concludes that the proper office of this structure is to secrete syno- 

 via ; an office which Clopton Havers had- assigned to them as long 

 ago as the year 1691, although his opinion has not been generally 

 adopted by later physiologists. 



"Description of a Process for extracting the Palladium which 

 exists in combination with the Gold of the Gongosocho and other 

 Mines in the Brazils." By Percival N. Johnson, Esq., in a letter to 

 the President, by whom it is communicated to the Society. 



The process consists in melting the gold, obtained from its ma- 

 trix by the ordinary processes of stamping and washing, with three 

 times its weight of silver, granulating it in cold water, and refining 

 it by the process of quartation, or separation of its alloys by nitric 

 acid. The nitric solution contains the silver, palladium, copper, and 

 a small proportion of iron and lead. 



May 14. — Contributions to Terrestrial Magnetism. No. VII. 

 By Lieut.-Colonel Sabine, R.A., For. Sec. U.S. 



