PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 
19 
causes cracks to appear in the harder layers, the longer the drying the 
more extensive the cracks. 
The Minute Structure of the Ovule. — Three or four of the last 
numbers of the £ Botanische Zeitung ’ have been almost wholly occu- 
pied with an article of Celakovsky’s, entitled “ Vergriinungsgeschichte 
der Eichen von Alliaria officinalis,” or history of the development of 
phyllody in the ovules of the plant named. The morphological 
dignity or nature of the ovule is still a moot point with physiologists, 
who are by no means agreed as to the significance of the monstrous 
conditions and transformations of this organ observed occasionally in 
different plants. The most logical view seems to be that it is of the 
same nature in all plants, though the explanations offered for different 
teratological phenomena exhibited by the ovule would point to a 
diversity of origin and dignity. Celakovsky seeks to throw some 
light on this subject by a careful and minute study of the different 
phases of transformation or malformation observed in the ovules of a 
proliferous inflorescence of Alliaria officinalis. He objects to the 
assumption that because the ovule sometimes develops as a shoot, the 
nucleus is a bud. Through this long paper he describes and figures 
the various modifications he has found of the leafy transformations of 
the ovular coats and a “ funicular appendage ” and the presence of a 
bud. He endeavours to show that the ovular shoot is not a metamor- 
phosed state of the nucleus, and says here we have an indisputable 
proof that the ovular shoot is not a transformation of the nucleus, and 
every explanation that the latter is anything more than an outgrowth 
or metablast must fail. In his investigations he believes he has found 
the nucleus present in the same ovule in which the bud is developed, 
and quite independent of it. — The Academy. 
The Microscopic Appearances in Inflammation of Connective Tissue. 
— Dr. G. Thin has communicated a valuable paper on this subject to the 
Royal Society. The following abstract of his views is taken from the 
‘ Proceedings of the Royal Society ’ (No. 160). The author, referring to 
observations recorded in his previous papers, distinguishes in the 
cornea primary bundles of fibrillary tissue, which are covered by 
elongated flat cells, layers of quadrangular flat cells (which are analo- 
gous in appearance and relative position to the layers of cells 
described by him as investing the secondary and tertiary bundles of 
tendon), and the stellate cells. To these he now adds a description 
of parallel chains of spindle-cells, each cell having two processes, one 
at each end of the spindle, by which it is joined to its fellows on 
either side. These cells are coextensive with the cornea substance, 
and are present in every interspace of the primary bundles, and con- 
sequently layers in different planes cross each other at an angle. 
They can be occasionally seen in thin vertical sections of the fresh 
frog’s cornea, treated in osmic acid ; and from such preparations a cell 
with its terminal processes can be sometimes isolated.* They are 
more easily seen in similar sections which have been 15-30 minutes 
in half per cent, solution of chloride of gold, and then sealed up in 
concentrated acetic acid and examined 24-48 hours afterwards. 
They have no anatomical continuity with the stellate cells. 
