BY MOLECULAR COALESCENCE. 12a 
myself seen nothing that struck me as giving them the 
appearance of nucleated cells, that is as compared with 
typical forms of these cells, such as the germinal vesicle 
of the mammal, or the caudate cells occurring in the grey 
cerebral substance. Indeed they have always appeared to 
me, excepting as occasionally represented in plates, to be 
most uncell-like, which from the observation just quoted 
ought not to be the case. For the contents of the lacunz 
being represented as clear, the nuclei contained therein 
ought to have been distinctly visible without the severe 
expedients of fire and caustic. And then, after boiling the 
bone in caustic soda, Professor Kolliker observes, as a quod 
sequitur, that the opaque corpuscles which make their ap- 
pearance must be regarded as the contracted cell-contents, 
including the nucleus. Now to me the more probable 
inference would be, that a nucleus, so delicate as to be 
before invisible or only dimly seen, would by such rough 
treatment have been utterly annihilated; and that the 
granular material remaining after the coction would have 
been so ill-defined and irregular in its form as to allow of 
being considered anything which the experimenter wished. 
As for my own opinion upon the subject, I state positively 
that if the experiment had been mine instead of Professor 
Kolliker’s, I should have considered the result to be of no 
value whatever. 
I know of no part in which the true nature of lacunz is 
so manifest as in the osseous lamine spiralis of the 
human subject. This part consists of two very thin plates, 
partially separated by canals containing the cochlear 
nerves. If a detached portion of one of these plates, 
where it is thinnest, be examined by the microscope, it will 
be seen to be perforated by oval spaces of different sizes, 
corresponding to the osseous lacunee or bone-cells of the 
