TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 115 
 inherentself-regulating property in the blood, by which the normal relative proportion 
between its constituent elements is sought to be re-established. 
In acute renal dropsy the point de départ in the blood-changes would appear to be 
loss of albumen; but in the chronic form of the disease attended with uremia, the 
starting-point probably is solution of the corpuscles. 
The loss of albumen experienced by the blood in Bright’s disease would appear to 
be inversely proportioned to the quantity which appears in the urine, and probably 
in the dropsical effusion. ' 
The quantity of fibrine in the blood is regulated in great part by that of the cor- 
puscles, not by “ adjustment,” but in virtue of the causal relation subsisting between 
the disintegration of the one and the production of the other. 
Diminution by removal, therefore, of the quantity of globules in the blood will not 
necessarily cause elimination of the fibrine, because it involves diminished production 
of the latter; but the converse of the proposition will not hold, as diminished pro- 
portion of fibrine, by whatever cause produced, may give rise to elimination of the 
blood-corpuscles in the form of hemorrhage. 
On certain Pathological Characters of the Blood Corpuscles. 
By J. P. HENNEssy. 
The author stated the results of his microscopical cbservations on healthy blood, 
and on inflamed blood. The result to which he directed particular attention was, 
that in inflamed blood the corpuscles were smaller and darker than in healthy blood. 
In corroboration of his views, he quoted the remarks of M. Donne, of Mr. Wharton 
Jones, Mr. Gulliver, and many others. Upon this change of size Mr. Hennessy _ 
founded a theory of inflammation ; the increase of temperature, the occurrence of the 
buffy coat and the other phenomena being satisfactorily explained. 
Dr. Lanxester laid on the table a number of the Tables issued by the Com- 
mittee for the Registration of Periodic Phenomena. These Tables were filled up, 
but he complained that every year persons took the tables, promising to fill them in, 
but failed to send them to the Committee. 
On the Alternation of Generations and Parthenogenesis in Plants and 
Animals. By E. Lanxsster, M.D., F.RS. 
The author, after alluding to the phenomena of “ Alternation’’ as described by 
__.Steenstrup in the Entozoa, Meduse, and Sertularian polyps, and to the phenomena 
_ of Parthenogenesis, described by Owen and Von Siebold, concluded his paper as 
follows :—‘‘ If we turn now to the vegetable kingdom, we find perfectly analogous 
phenomena presenting themselves. In fact, the modifications of the reproductive 
function, which have recently excited so much surprise in the animal kingdom, are 
the normal forms of the function among plants. In the roots and branches of a tree 
we have a gigantic ‘ nurse,’ and the buds are its progeny. Just as we find the same 
secondary products called ‘gemmz,’ in animals either remaining adherent to their 
parent-stocks, as in the Sertularian and other zoophytes, or floating off, as in Hydra 
and many others, so we find the buds of plants remaining attached to the tree, or 
becoming separated from it. Just, too, as we find a different form assumed by the 
secondary offspring of the ‘ nurse,’ as in the scolex-head of the cystic-worm, so we 
find in such cases as those presented by the ‘bulbillus,’ the ‘bulb,’ and the ‘sporule,’ 
different forms assumed by parts having the same relations in the plant as in the animal. 
So likewise in the plant we find a greater change of the secondary offspring taking 
place, when sexes are developed and flowers are produced, and the hermaphrodite 
flower, with its stamens and pistils, is the representative of the segments (proglottides) 
of the tape-worm, with its male and female apparatus in a common envelope. We 
_. may go yet further with our analogies in the vegetable kingdom. _ Here also we have 
numerous cases in which the germ-cell, the ovule, is produced, and developes within 
itself an embryo, quite independent of the influence of the sperm-cell, the pollen.” 
‘The paper was illustrated by the following diagram :— 
1857. , 8 
- 
all 
