QUARTERLY CHRONICLE OF MICROSCOPICAL 



SCIENCE. 



Histolog'y.* — Cornea. — Schweiggei- Seidel (^Berichte dei* 

 Sachs. G(s. der Wissenschaft/ 1869; Med. Centralblatt, 

 1870, p. 358) reproduces his often-expressed objections to 

 the use of silver solutions in histology, and the genuineness 

 of the structures displayed by their means, and finds them 

 confirmed by a special examination of the cornea. He be- 

 lieves the stellate corpuscles of the cornea to be purely arti- 

 ficial productions caused by the alterations of form in the 

 part when removed from its connections. Other appearances 

 produced by nitrate of silver, which are regarded as plasmatic 

 canals, he believes to be owing to simple precipitation. These 

 conclusions are certainly very much at variance with the con- 

 clusions of most observers. 



Ltjmpliatic Spaces in the Eye. — Schwalbe has contributed 

 to M. Schultze's ' Archiv' (vol. vi, p. 261 ,) a paper of more than 

 100 pages on the lymphatics of the anterior division of the eye- 

 ball, in continuation of that on the lymphatics of the posterior 

 division noticed in our last report.* The most important 

 results arrived at have reference to the communications of the 

 anterior chamber, which Schwalbe regards as a lymphatic 

 space, though it has no connection with the lymphatic ves- 

 sels. By injection of coloured liquid into the chamber he 

 succeeded in filling a belt of vessels on the surface of the 

 sclerotic, from which the injection passed into a ring of radial 

 vessels in the conjunctiva, and also to certain vessels running 

 in the direction of the musculi recti, all of Avhich were not 

 lymphatics, but veins. That these vessels were really veins Avas 

 shown, in the first place, by their arrangement, quite diffe- 

 rent from that of the known lymphatics ; and they were 

 also ascertained not to be perivascular lymphatics (such as 

 are described by Lightbody, ' Journal of Anatomy and Phy- 

 siology,' November, 1866). That the result is not due to 

 extravasation is shown by the low pressure (20mm.) at which 

 the injection is effected. The fact of a lymphatic chamber 

 standing in communication with a venous channel is often 

 met with in the lower vertebrata ; thus the caudal sinus of 

 fishes opens into the caudal vein, and the lymphatic hearts of 

 reptiles also into veins ; and, according to Schwalbe, it is 



* Chronicled by Frank Payue, M.B., Oxon, Pathologist to St. Marj's 

 Hospital. f See ' Quarterly Journal' for April, p. 195. 



