RECORD OF CURRENT RESEARCHES, ETC. 845 



days of incubation ; fifteen were found to be undergoing tbe normal 

 processes of development, and thirteen, though partly developed, 

 were found to be dead. No observations were made on eggs more 

 than thirteen days old ; in no case did the cane-sugar seem to have 

 been converted into glucose, but the authors are unable to rejjly to 

 the question they themselves propose : Has the sugar remained 

 unaltered in the albumen or has it been absorbed by the embryo ? 

 They draw, however, attention to what they were enabled to observe 

 in those eggs which underwent no development at all ; part of the 

 vitellus presented a milky-white colour, the albumen, especially near 

 the yolk, was opaque, and the egg, wheu opened, had the odour of a 

 substance in which lactic fermentation was going on. 



M. Pouchet has also made some experiments on the eggs of birds, 

 with the view of seeing whether the form of the egg has any 

 influence on tlie direction in which the embryo is developed, and 

 found that if he seized a chalaza and turned it round in the yolk, and 

 then allowed development to proceed, the embryo was itself altered 

 in jjosition. 



Granular Bodies found in the Ovum. * — M. Dareste reaffirms 

 the presence of amyloid granules iu the yellow of the egg ; he sho«s 

 the presence of starch by the action of chemical reagents, and points 

 out that the fact of these granules not being composed of lecithin is 

 shown by their insolubility in alcohol or ether; he has not, how- 

 ever, been able to isolate these graniiles from the rest of the mass. 



M. Dastre, however, is of opinion that the granulations are 

 phosphates of fatty bodies (of lecithin), and asserts that they contain 

 no starch ; he draws attention to the difficulty of finding starch, which 

 gives a blue reaction to the iodine test (as found by Dareste), and 

 points out that it is only vegetable starch which does this, and that 

 animal starch reddens under the action of iodine. 



Development of the Ova and the Structure of the Ovary in 

 Man and other Mammalia,| — The history of these structm-es has 

 been lately dealt with by Mr. Balfour in the ' Quarterly Journal of 

 Microscopical Science,'^ and to this paper Dr. Foulis refers in one 

 by himself in Humphry's ' Journal of Anatomy and Physiology.' 



The principal results arrived at by Dr. Foidis are that all the 

 ova are derived from the germ epithelial cells. In the develoj)ment 

 of the ovary small and large groups of the germ epithelial cells 

 become gradually embedded in the ever-advancing stroma. Germ 

 epithelial cells do not grow downwards into the substance of the 

 ovary. The ovarian stroma constantly grows outwards, surrounding 

 and embedding certain of the germ epithelial cells. As these latter 

 increase in size, and as the stroma thickens around them, the whole 

 ovary becomes enlarged. Pfliiger's tubes in the kitten's ovary have 

 no existence as such, but are appearances produced by long groups 



* ' Comptes Rtudus,' Ixsxviii. (1879) Nos. 11 aud 14 ; see ' Rev. Sci. Nat.,' i. 

 (1879) p. 91. 



t ' Journ. Anat. and Phye.' (Humphry), xiii. (1879) p. 353. 

 X ' Quart. Jouru. Micr. Sci.,' xviii. (1878). 



