( 373 ) 



A priori, another result might have been expected. The intestinal 

 mucosa may be considered as a resorbing organ par excellence^ and, 

 as experience teaches us, diluted Na Cl-solutions pass through it with 

 the greatest facility. Hence it seemed obvious that when scraped - off 

 intestinal epithelium would be distributed in large quantities of NaCl- 

 solutions of different concentrations, the cells would be saturated 

 with these solutions, so that there would soon be no more question 

 of a difference in osmotic pressure between the contents of the cell 

 and its surroundings; in other words, it was to be foreseen that the 

 volume of the intestinal epithelium would not be affected by the 

 influence of salt-solutions of different concentration. 



The following experiment, made in the same manner and with 

 the same sort of epithelium, was to give results quite different from 

 those of the first experiment. 



Experiment 11. 



Epithelium of the small intestine of a horse, at about half a meter's 

 distance from the pylorus. 



The epithelium is distributed in a little blood- serum of the same 

 animal. 



In this experiment the volume of the epithelium remained unchanged. 



The difference in the results of the two experiments made a 

 number of similar experiments necessary. ') They confirmed and 

 enlarged the knowledge we had obtained from the two first : 

 occasionally it appeared that, as in experiment I, the volume of 

 epithelium was greatly under the influence of the concentration ; in 

 by far the most cases, however, the concentration exercised no per- 



*) A full aud detailed description of the experimeuts, hereby made, would require 

 more space than we cau here afford ; that is also the case with other particulars. They 

 will, however, be inserted iu the Archiv f. Anat. u. Physiol. Physiol. Abth, 



