. he Ee “Bensley " - 133 
secretion, namely the zymogen granules and the so-called basal fila- 
ments containing prozymogen. 
3. The cardiac gland cells are closely related to the mucous chief 
cells of the neck of the fundus gland and to the pyloric gland cells. 
This conclusion is based on the facts that all three stain similarly in 
mucin stains, are connected by a similar transition with the surface 
epithelium, and are recruited from similar dividing cells at the bottoms 
of the foveole. Furthermore, if one traces the transition from the 
fundus zone to the pyloric zone on the one hand or the cardiac zone on 
the other, it is found to take place by the gradual lengthening of the 
neck of the gland, together with the gradual disappearance of the chief 
and parietal cells. 
This similarity does not amount to actual identity of the several 
structures although such differences as exist are rather of degree than 
of kind. In the cardiac gland cells as a rule only the distal portion of 
the cell near the lumen is occupied by the mass of secretion, in the 
pyloric gland cells and mucous neck cells, it frequently fills the whole 
cell, the nucleus being compressed and flattened at the proximal end. 
Moreover, the mucin of the cardiac gland cells stains with less inten- 
sity in muchematein and mucicarmine than that of their prototypes 
in the other glands. The obvious explanation of these differences is 
that the cardiac gland cells are physiologically less active and secrete 
their mucin less rapidly and in a less concentrated form. 
4. The peculiar grouping and branching noted by Edelmann and 
others in the cardiac glands possess no important significance either as a 
characteristic of the cardiac glands or as a point of difference between 
them and the fundus and pyloric glands. The fact that among the 
human cardiac glands there occur highly complex branched tubular 
glands, similar in all respects to the other cardiac glands except that 
they are formed wholly or in part of zymogenic chief cells, indicates 
clearly that this branching and arrangement are determined by other 
factors than the phylogenetic history of the glands or the nature of the 
cells composing them. . 
5. The cardiac glands are decadent or retrogressive structures de- 
rived from fundus glands by the disappearance of their more highly 
specialized cellular constituents, the zymogenic chief cells and the 
parietal cells. This conclusion will be discussed at greater length in 
the next section, but in the meantime the histological arguments in its 
favor may be stated. These are in brief: (1) the circumstance that 
both parietal cells and zymogenie chief cells occur in small numbers in 
the human cardiac glands; (2) the feeble physiological activity of the 
