PKOaRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 271 



stems supposed to represent palms was shown to be that of a fern, 

 there being no true evidence that palms existed in that age. The 

 plants known as coniferous plants, allied to pines and firs, were 

 described, and their peculiar fruits, so common at Peel, in Lancashire, 

 were explained, and some plants of unknown affinities, but beautiful 

 organization, were referred to. The physiological differences between 

 these extinct ferns, and other plants, especially in their marvellous 

 gwasi-exogenous organization, were pointed out, and the lecturer con- 

 cluded by showing how unvarying must have been the green hue of 

 the carboniferous forests, owing to the entire absence from them of all 

 the gay colours of the flowering jilants which form so conspicuous a 

 feature in the modern landscape, especially in the temperate and 

 colder regions. The antiquity of the mummy, he added, was as 

 nothing compared with the countless ages that had rolled by since 

 these plants lived, and yet they must not forget that every one of 

 those plants, living in ages so incalculably remote, had a history, an 

 individuality, as distinct and definite as our o'^vti. 



Structure of the Lung in Pneumonia. — A paper on this important 

 subject has been published by Herr Friedlander, and also uj^on the 

 pathological processes occurring in pneumonia established by section 

 of the pneumogastric nerve in the rabbit. His inquiries into the 

 latter point were chiefly undertaken with a view of determining 

 whether the pneumonic inflammation was due to the entrance of fluids 

 and solids into the respiratory passages consequent upon the paralysis 

 of the glottis, or whether it was a neuro-paralytic phenomenon. He 

 finds * that numerous dark-red sj)ots, not containing any air, make 

 their appearance within six hours after section of the vagi in the 

 vicinity of which the tissue, though still capable of being inflated, is 

 infiltrated with bloody serum. Sections of these parts which, after 

 having been inflated, have been preserved in alcohol, show that at 

 such points the alveoli are filled with a fibro-granular mass, red 

 blood-corpuscles, and a considerable number of very large coarsely- 

 granulated elements. These last-named large cells, which are for the 

 most part more or less spherical in form, though sometimes elliptical 

 or polygonal, are either firmly adherent to the wall of the alveoli, or 

 lie free in their cavity. Their protoplasm occasionally contains, 

 besides the ordinary coarse granules, brown and black pigment- 

 granules, as well as red blood-corpuscles, and when examined on a 

 warmed microscope stage, exhibits distinct changes of form, but none 

 of locomotion. These cells have already been observed by Colberg 

 in the catarrhal pneumonia of man, and have been described by him 

 as " swollen epithelial cells." In this view Friedlander appears dis- 

 posed to coincide, regarding them as forms which are the direct 

 consequence of the swelling of the normal epithelial cells in the 

 serous fluid poured out and surrounding them. In favour of this view 

 he advances the additional argument that similar forms of cells may 

 be met with wherever, as in simple hypostasis or in multiple capillary 

 embolia, a sanguinolent serous fluid is poured out into the alveoli. 



* Vide ' Lancet,' Oct. 4. 



