MOT Tu ie | PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 45 
Orycteropus ; and when Professor Flower has completed his long- 
expected report on the anatomy of Moschus moschiferus, we shall know 
the true position in the zoological scale of this rare animal. At all 
events, Professor Gulliver’s observations have triumphantly proved 
the importance and significance of size, both in a zoological and physio- 
logical point of view, as determined by very numerous and careful 
micrometrical measurements of the red corpuscles of the blood through- 
out the vertebrate sub-kingdom. 
The Mucous and Peptic Glands of the Stomach.—It has been cus- 
tomary to recognize a distinction between the ordinary follicular glands 
of the stomach and those more complex glands which lie in the vicinity 
of the pyloric orifice, and which are called peptic glands. In a paper, 
however, read before the Silesian Scientific Society on the 13th of 
May, Dr. Elstein has formed an opposite conclusion. His observa- 
tions were made on the cat, pig, dog, and rabbit. The so-called 
mucous glands of the stomach are chiefly found in the pyloric region, 
except a zone having a breadth of about one-third or one-half of an 
inch, which is chiefly occupied with peptic glands. The alveoli of 
the stomach are lined with columnar epithelium, the cells of which, 
at first closed, subsequently burst, discharging their contents, and 
becoming replaced by others which were previously subjacent. The 
cells lining the mucous glands are short, contain a granular proto- 
plasm, with a nucleus at the lower end. The entire series of physical 
and chemical characters of these cells show that they belong to the 
typical cells (hauptzellen) of Heidenhain. Four or five hours after a 
meal the mucous glands appear cloudy and shrunken, whilst they 
absorb colouring matters, as aniline blue, with remarkable facility. 
The mucous glands secrete a fluid which possesses digestive powers, 
converting albumen into peptone. 
The Structure of Pontobdella verrucata.—The anatomy of this spe- 
cies has been very fully investigated lately by M. Leon Vaillant, who 
has given a comprehensive account of it in the ‘ Annales des Sciences 
Naturelles’ (Zoological part, p. 1, 1870). Of this paper the following 
excellent abstract has appeared in ‘ Nature.’ The species is so called 
on account of the proper zoonites or segments of the animal supporting 
four tubercles, though the cutaneous segments or zoonites only bear 
two. The total number of cutaneous zoonites is sixty-seven. The 
anterior orifice of the digestive system is placed at the centre of the 
anterior sucker. The posterior orifice opens dorsally just in front of 
the posterior sucker. The skin presents a dermis and an epidermis, 
the latter being composed of a delicate cuticle and of a layer of epithe- 
lial cells, corresponding to the pigmentary layer of Moquin-Tandon. 
The dermis is composed of cells concealed by a network of what 
appear to be anastomosing tubes. Beneath the skin, and almost form- 
ing part of it, is a dense layer of smooth muscular tissue, the external 
fibres of which are circular, the deeper longitudinal. By the agency 
of these the locomotion of the animal is chiefly effected. Between the 
muscular layer and the digestive tube an immense number of yellow 
granules are found, which appear to be of the same nature as the uni- 
