PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 227 



cells we know to form the great bulk of those present in perfectly 

 recent choleraic dejections. Whilst in this condition it has been 

 already mentioned that they frequently show one or more distinct 

 nuclear vacuoles in their interior, and they are then identical in 

 aspect with the large mother-cells containing bioplast-masses, pre- 

 viously described in connection with the subject of the evacuations. 



" There is one class of bodies in the evacuations, the nature of 

 which has hitherto been peculiarly puzzling and obscure — namely, 

 that of flattened, whitish or pale-yellowish hyaline cells showing no 

 evident structure or contents, but the observations on the changes 

 occurring in the bioplasts of the blood explain the nature of these 

 also, for the empty capsules persisting after the escape of the mole- 

 cular contents of the pus-like cells, are exactly similar to the hyaline 

 bodies of the evacuations, and unless the actual steps in their forma- 

 tion had been followed, their nature would have been as obscure as 

 that of the latter cells has till now remained. Hyaline vesicles, 

 somewhat resembling these, are more or less generally found in all 

 intestinal discharges, and are probably the result of endosmotic pro- 

 cesses acting on the epithelial cells, as was long ago pointed out by 

 Heidenhain and Briicke in connection with appearances observed in 

 healthy epithelium ; they may occasionally be seen closely attached to 

 the cells in those very exceptional cases in which epithelium can be 

 detected in choleraic discharges, as well as very frequently in connec- 

 tion with the loose epithelium found in the intestines after death, as 

 figured and described in the last report." 



Besides these important observations the authors give some others, 

 in the course of which they discovered evident Vibriones and Bac- 

 teria in considerable abundance. There is much in the book to excite 

 the interest of the medical microscopist, and those who are likely to be 

 in the Indian colony should certainly study tbe researches of Messrs. 

 Lewis and Cunningham. 



On a Haematozoon inhabiting Human Blood : in relation to Chy- 

 luria and other Diseases. By T. B. Lewis, M.B., Calcutta, 1872. — We 

 have in an earlier number given a summary of the contents of this 

 book. So we now merely commend it to the notice of our readers 

 as an excellent little volume. 



PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 



Asterophyllites not the branch of a CaZcwm'te.— Professor Williamson, 

 F.B.S., stated, at one of the February meetings of the Manchester Philo- 

 sophical Society, that the second fossil plant described by Mr. Binney at 

 the meeting of the Society, on January 21st, and of which a notice ap- 

 peared in the Society's 'Proceedings,' does not belong to some new genus, 

 as Mr. Binney supposed, but is one that he has already described on two 

 or three occasions as being the stem or branch of the well-known genus 

 Asterophyllites. In his description of the VolJcmannia Binneyi, published 



