406 NOTES AND MEMORANDA. 



portion of the gland and hollowing out in it a cavity, in which the 

 liquid accumulated, he arrives at the conclusion * that the gland called 

 liver among the Cephalopods has no functional analogies with the liver 

 of Vertehrates. It is a digestive gland, destined to transform the 

 albuminoid matters alone, which these animals make their usual food, 

 and is without action on the fatty and amylaceous matters. He 

 pointed out the same fact some years ago in Carcinus mamas and 

 Astacus fiuviatilis, and since then M. Plateau has arrived at the same 

 results in his researches on the Arachnida and Myriapoda, so that it 

 may now be considered to be established that the liver of the higher 

 Vertebrata is not represented in the Invertebrata. 



The communication of M. Jousset de Bellesme confirms in some 

 respects the researches of Krukenberg on the same subject,! and those 

 of Fredericq4 The infusion of the hepatic tissue (of the Poulp), 

 Fredericq says, digests fibrino both in acid and in alkaline solutions, 

 and transforms starch into glucose. Therefore we have hero a diastatic 

 ferment, and another ferment acting on the albuminoids which is 

 neither pepsine nor thrypsine (it is a mixture of both, according to 

 Krukenberg), and he reiterates what he previously said of the liver of 

 the slug : § " The so-called liver of the Poulp is a digestive gland, 

 which could be better compared with the pancreas of the Vertebrata." 

 The opinion of M. Jousset de Bellesme diifers from the preceding 

 in that he rejects the idea of any action of the liver of the Poulp on 

 amylaceous and fatty matters.! 



In regard to digestion, M. Jousset de Bellesme (in a subsequently 

 published note 1| ) says that the superior salivary glands of the 

 Poulp do not exercise any digestive action ; their liquid only 

 serves in mastication and deglutition. As for the inferior salivary 

 glands, their function would be to dissolve the connective tissue 

 without attacking the muscular fibres themselves ; whilst the liquid 

 of the liver, on the contrary, digests the albuminoid matters. The 

 author adds : " After numerous attempts, operating sometimes on 

 fasting animals, sometimes on animals which were digesting, I became 

 convinced that none of the liquids supplied by the glandular appendages 

 are capable of emulsionating fats and transforming starch into glucose. 

 We therefore have to do with an animal which only possesses the power 

 of digesting albuminoid and connective matters, and the fact is all the 

 more remarkable as some of its own organs, the liver, for instance, 

 contain a large proportion of fatty matters." This would be a con- 

 vincing argument in favour of the opinion that living beings may form 

 fatty matters by the disassimilation of albuminoid matters ; but M. 

 Fredericq shows that the liver of the Poulp transforms starch, and 

 emulsiouates fatty substances.** 



* ' Coniptcs Eeiidus,' Ixxxviii. (1879) p. 304. 



t " Versncbe zur vergleichenden Physiologie dcr Vcrdaiumg," in ' Uulers. 

 ans dem Physiol. Instit. der Univt-rs. Heidflberg,' i. (1878) o'27. 



X ' Bull. Acad. Sci. Bclgique,' xWi. (1878) 7(31. § Ibid. 213. 



II 'Itcv. lutcrnat. Sci..' i)i. (1879) 2(53. 



i 'Coniptes Reudua,' Ixxxviii. (1879) 423. 



♦* ' liev. luteruat. Sci.,' iii. (1879) 271. 



