MILLER — CONTRIBUTIONS FROM ANATOMICAL LABORATORY. 209 



their walls were very thin. Threads were passed around each of 

 the lungs near their union at the anterior end of the liver and 

 then they were cut off and at once put into the fixing fluid or into 

 the stain as the procedure necessitated. As the lung was kept 

 distended by this method it allowed me to handle it without 

 touching the surfaces and at the same time produced a uni- 

 formly distended and perfectly smooth surface. On account of 

 the great amount of blood present in the lungs, it was found 

 necessary to remove it in some manner so as to be able to see 

 the finer structures, especially with a high power. This was 

 done by washing out the blood with normal salt solution, inject- 

 ing it into the main artery. 



For the study of the peritoneal covering and of the epithe- 

 lium of the lung, the usual methods with nitrate of silver were 

 used. An interesting point was brought out while investigating 

 the epithelium, viz., that while on all ordinary serous membranes 

 Dekhuysen's method had given the most satisfactory results, in 

 Necturus it proved to be exceedingly unsatisfactory. This was 

 probably due to some action of the nitric acid on the peculiar vis- 

 cid secretion which covered the lungs ; for, when after many fail- 

 ures the simple aqueous solution was used, each cell appeared 

 bounded by clear and sharply defined lines. 



For elastic fibers Hoehl's modification of TTnna's orcein stain 

 for the skin was used ; it gave uniform and very satisfactory re- 

 sults. For the nerves methylene blue was use with varying suc- 

 cess. 



