92 PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 



bodies which are to be seen in them. Organs of hearing and toiicli 

 have not been discovered. The mouth is covered by a pair of maxillae 

 and a small labium. There is a reciu'ved oesophageal passage leading 

 into a large cjecal stomach, anel an intestinal tube departing from near 

 the end of the oesojihagus and running straight to the anus. The 

 heart is an elongated tube extending from the second to the fifth seg- 

 BQent, with probably three openings. Three pairs of transparent sac- 

 like gills are attached at the base of the second, third, and fourth 

 l^aii's of feet. Genital Organs. — The single specimen taken is a female. 

 The ovary, probably composed of two ovaries, has a rose-colour, and 

 the genital papilla is situated at the under part of the first segment ; 

 it is covered by two small lamellae, which in this case did not sustain 

 the eggs, which were found to be attached to the first pair of ambula- 

 tory legs. The animal seems to carry them in a manner similar to 

 the pycnogonid Nijmphon. Development. — The eggs contained embryos 

 having already the antennae, the five pairs of legs, and the abdominal 

 feet ; they show that Thaiimops has to undergo no metamorphosis, and 

 that the young ones leave the eggs with all their appendages well 

 developed. 



The so-called Syphilis Corpuscles. — These bodies, which our readers 

 are familiar with by this time, have been the subject of many papers 

 in the German journals. But none of them has been as good as that 

 little sketch which Dr. E. Klein has given in the ' London Medical 

 Eecord ' of Api-il 9th. It is an account of Biesiadecki and Lostorfer's 

 researches. Lostorfer, in the beginning of the past year, alleged that 

 he had made the important discovery that, in preparations of the 

 blood of syphilitic individuals, there develop within a week small 

 bright corpuscles — syjihilis coriniscles — which in four or six days 

 reach the size of a coloured blood-disk, and in six or eight days 

 become vacuolated. This observation of Lostorfer has been declared 

 by many observers to be incorrect. Biesiadecki ( Untersuchungen ans 

 dem Pathologisch-Anatomischen Institute in Kraliau. Vienna, 1872), 

 following Lostorfer in a large series of experiments, has come to the 

 conclusion that the assertions of Lostorfer are, with some slight modi- 

 fications, correct. The mode in which Biesiadecki proceeds in his 

 observations is similar to that employed by Lostorfer. By means of 

 a pointed needle, a small drop of blood is taken from the perfectly 

 clean finger, brought on a clean glass slide, and covered with a glass. 

 By a slight pressure on one edge of the cover-glass with the nail of 

 the finger, the blood can easily be made to sjiread out so that the 

 blood corpuscles lie only in one layer, without being broken uj) and 

 destroyed. Preparations in which the blood cori^uscles have not 

 spread out into one layer, or in which they appear to be squeezed, are 

 to be put aside as useless. A number of preparations are brought 

 into a moist chamber, where they are kept at a temperature of 14-18° 

 C. (57-64° Fahr.). In most of the preparations which have not be- 

 come dry at the edges of the cover-glass, taken either from syphilitic 

 or other patients, e. g. arthritic or rheumatic, there a^jpear on the 

 second, third, or fourth day, numerous needle-shaped or rhombic haemo- 

 globin crystals, varying in diameter from that of a blood-disk to twice 



