90 PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 



The Condition of Heart and Kidney in an obscure form of Disease, 

 which lately occurred in America, is thus described by Dr. L. Curtis : 

 — " The piece of heart presented on the outside simple atheromatous 

 and calcareous degeneration. The muscular fibres appeared healthy. 

 The kidney presented a mottled appearance, part being of a cream- 

 colour, other portions being of a natural colour, except much paler. I 

 took two small pieces of this kidney and placed them in a weak solu- 

 tion of chromic acid, to harden. After a day or two, I cut some thin 

 sections, both in a longitudinal and a transverse direction, and stained 

 them in an alkaline solution of carmine. On examining the sections 

 with the microscope, the whole field appeared confused, and it was only 

 after repeated and prolonged examination that I was enabled to make 

 out anything at all satisfactory. This was particularly the case over 

 the greyer portions. The cause of this indistinctness was the infiltra- 

 tion of the organ with a granular substance. In some places this gra- 

 nular substance was replaced by round bodies resembling, in size and 

 appearance, pus corpuscles ; in other places there were collections of 

 round bodies from one-third to one-half the diameter of the former ; 

 neither of these collections had well-defined boundaries. The edges 

 of some of the sections, which were extremely thin, showed, where the 

 granular material had been washed out, that the connective tissue of 

 the kidney was somewhat thickened, and contained many more mus- 

 cular points than in health. The Mali^ighian tufts were, in many 

 places, contracted down into little compact knots, of cicatricial-like 

 tissue. The m'iniferous tubules were filled with a granular material ; 

 the cells lining them had lost their distinctive characteristics, and were 

 cloudy and opaque. Most of the straight tubules were wasted to mere 

 irregular, nodulated cords. These appearances do not correspond 

 altogether with any specimen that I have met before, or with any de- 

 scription that I have seen published. I should dislike, at present, to 

 give a decided opinion as to their nature ; they correspond, however, 

 more closely with what Eindfleisch calls cellidar hypertrophy of the 

 connective tissue, than anything else with which I am acquainted." 



On Tuhe-huilding Amphipoda. — -In ' Silliman's American Journal ' 

 for June, 1874, Mr. S. I. Smith gives the following account. He 

 says, " In examining recently an alcoholic specimen of a sjiecies of 

 Xenoclea, I noticed a peculiar oj)aque glandular structure filling a 

 large portion of the third and fourth pairs of thoracic legs, which 

 in most, if not all, the non-tube-building Amphipoda are wholly oc- 

 cupied by muscles. A further examination shows that the terminal 

 segment (dactylusj in these legs is not acute and claw-like, but trun- 

 cated at the tip, and apparently tubular. In this species, a large 

 cylindrical portion of the gland lies along each side of the long basal 

 segment, and these two portions uniting at the distal end pass through 

 the ischial and along the posterior side of the meral and carj^al seg- 

 ments, and doubtless connect with the tubular dactylus. There can be 

 no doubt that these are the glands which secrete the cement with which 

 the tubes are built, and that these two pairs of legs are specialized for 

 that purpose. A hasty examination revealed a similar structure of the 

 corresponding legs in Amphithoe maculata, Ptilocheirus pinguis, Cera- 



