PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 317 
nerve-bundles. The ultimate nerve-fibres were given off at right 
angles, and piercing the quadrilateral cartilage en masse, ended in 
fine fibres between the hair-cells in the organ of Corti. 
The very end of the cul-de-sac was lined with “ vestibular cells,” 
showing thus a marked difference between the birds’ and mammalian 
cochlez. 
On the triangular cartilage were columnar epithelial cells, going 
on over the Membrana Basilaris, while on the quadrilateral cartilage 
were hyaline cells, that filled the sulcus on its border, and corre- 
sponded to the limbus in the mammalian cochlea. In answer to 
several questions, Dr. Pritchard described his mode of preparing the 
cochlea. Taking a small one, as a bird’s, he thus proceeds: 
1. Place at once in methylated spirit. 
2. In alcoholic solution of chromic acid (4rd per cent.) for five to 
ten days. 
3. In 1 per cent. solution of nitric acid, constantly agitating the 
liquid, for one to four days. 
4, Wash: transfer to gum and water for some hours. 
5. In methylated spirit till wanted. 
6. Imbed: cut section: stain: mount in glycerine. 
April 20, 1877.—Henry Power, Esq., President, in the chair. 
Double Staining with Indigo Carmine and Carmine.—Mr. Golding- 
Bird read a paper upon this subject. He referred to an account of it 
in the ‘ American Journal of the Medical Sciences’ for January 1877, 
though it was originated by F. Merkel in Germany in 1874. 
He described the dye as consisting of two fluids made separately, 
but mixed before use; one was a boracic solution of carmine (carmine, 
38s; borax, 3ij; distilled water, Ziv); the other, a similar solution of 
indigo carmine (indigo carmine, 3ij; borax, 31); distilled water, Ziv). 
Indigo carmine is the trade name for sulphindigotate of potassium, 
and is the same dye as used by Chrzonszezewsky in his researches 
upon the commencement of the portal duct. 
The specimens to be stained, if hardened in chromic acid, must be 
deprived of it by washing, and then immersed in the mixed dyes for a 
quarter of an hour. After that they must be transferred to a saturated 
solution of oxalic acid, both to “set” the blue colour as well as to 
lighten the general tint, and then, having been washed in distilled 
water, mounted in Canada balsam in the usual way. 
The results obtained by this process, when successful, were both 
instructive and beautiful, but unfortunately the same results did not 
always follow, a great number of specimens showing often nothing 
but a general purple tint resembling a successful logwood stain. 
The author showed, however, several slides in which he had 
obtained the double stain more or less perfectly. One specimen of 
liver showed the portal canal remarkably well; the blood-disks in the 
portal vein were of a brilliant apple-green; the hepatic artery, reddish 
purple; the process of Glisson’s capsule, blue or blue purple ; and the 
portal duct had its wall of the same colour but of a different tint, the 
columnar cells lining it being just tinged a brownish purple with blue 
nuclei. Another specimen of ossifying cartilage showed the various 
component parts sharply picked out in blue, purple, red, and light green. 
2 A 
