274 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. I. 



not regularly fed, I attribute the intact form possessrd by many of the 

 parasites to the lowered vitality of the host produced by want of food. 



Eberth's views are directly opposed to mine. He considers the fibril- 

 lation of the structures in question not as an evidence of their degenera- 

 tion, but as a stage in their formation. His observations, confined as 

 they were to one form, cannot, I think, be held as conclusive by anyone 

 who has studied the changes in the pancreas of Amphibia as exhibited 

 throughout the year. I cannot share Eberth's views as to the action of 

 corrosive sublimate on the form of these bodies and that it does not 

 produce a contraction or shrinkage, as he maintains, is shown by 

 Figs. I, 2, 9, and lod, iib, which were drawn from preparations made 

 with this reagent. I would call attention to Fig. lob, nb, which 

 shows a form not at all uncommon in the specimen o{ Amblystoina re- 

 ferred to in the last paragraph and which is very like some of the 

 specimens of Drepanidiiim figured by Gaule. 



I have, in this connection, made further observations on the elabo- 

 ration of the pancreatic ferment. The results of these are confirmatory 

 of the views already advanced by me and may be summarized as fo 

 lows : — 



1. In the gland cell filling up with zymogen granules, the latter are 

 largest at the border of lumen of the gland tubule, while the smallest 

 are found at that edge of the granular area nearest the nucleus. This 

 serves to show that the granules are increased in volume by the depo- 

 sition of a substance from the " protoplasmic " area of the gland cell. 



2. While the eosinophilous substance disappears from the nucleus, the 

 "protoplasmic" zone becomes eosinophilous at a time nearly coin- 

 ciding with the commencement of the deposit of granules in the cell. 

 In other words, the eosinophilous (or safranophilous) substance diff"uses 

 out the nucleus to the protoplasmic zone of the cell, from which it is 

 apparently removed to be fixed in some way in the zymogen granules. 



3. In the gland cell after exhaustion and when a restoration of its 

 active condition commences there is an absorption, apparently from 

 without, of chromatin, or of a chromatin-like substance, by the protoplas- 

 mic zone, and it would seem that the nucleus increases its quantity of 

 chromatin from this source. 



