486 OKIGINAL AETICLES. 



of our composite from our Anglicised word " tautologous," we would 

 call these growths " tautogeneous." As just hinted, they admit of a 

 two-fold rationale. The blood either needs, as in the case I shall 

 proceed to detail, an excess of some material, or it possesses some 

 material in excess over its requirements ; in either case " tautoge- 

 neous" growths spring up, in the one case to elaborate, in the other 

 to consume, that excess of material. The history of pathological 

 tumours is but an illustration of the latter of these divisions. 

 The severity of our struggle for existence has called into being so 

 rigid a law of parsimony, as to render it difficult to give illustrations 

 of this class of tautogeneous growths from physiological nutrition. 

 But though difficult, it is not impossible. I proceed to illustrate 

 the former of these two divisions by an account of certain structures 

 observed by me in a recent dissection of a young porpoise. 



The animal was a young Phoccena communis, but it had attained 

 at least fourth-fifths of its full size, weighing as it did 60 lbs. and 

 being 47i inches in length. 



On either side the aorta, just where it became free from the dia- 

 phragm, on passing into the abdomen, two elongated bodies were to 

 be seen, lying in close contact with the posterior part of its calibre for 

 a length of as much as three inches. Their width was about the fourth 

 of an inch, and this width was maintained for their entire length. 

 Their external surface was smooth, only a little lobulated at their 

 upper end and internal margin. They possessed a readily detachable 

 fibro-cellular capsule. They were reddish in colour, firm to the touch, 

 on section at first homogeneous, but subsequently showing to careful 

 inspection numerous orifices of cut vessels, though very little fibrous 

 stroma. Their upper ends lay behind, and in contact with the poste- 

 rior half of each supra-renal capsule. This relation will show that 

 the structures in question could not have been abnormally persistent 

 Wolffian bodies, which indeed further particulars will yet further 

 prove. 



These structures, when examined by the microscope, were seen to 

 be all but wholly made up of such cells as we get from the Malpighian 

 bodies in the spleen, or indeed from the cortical part of a lymphatic 

 gland, namely, circular nucleated cells with granular contents, of a 

 size somewhat less than that of a red blood corpuscle. 



Functionally, these structures may be regarded as identical with 

 lymphatic glands; morphologically, I consider them different; on 

 account, first, of their symmetrically elongated tongue-like shape, all 

 but entirely smooth and unlobulated, and secondly, on account of 

 their encapsulation in an external coat of fibro-cellular tissue, and 

 their want of such supporting elements within their parenchyma.* 



* Though my dissection enables ms to confirm the views put forth by Mr. Turner, 

 it compels me to dissent from those anatomists who say there is nothing in the Ceta- 

 cean economy to represent either the Vena Azygos or the Cowper's Glands of Human 

 Anatomy. 



