ON THE STRUCTURE OF HYALINE CARTILAGE, 17 



that the fibrillary tissue is knit together by a ceiuent-sub- 

 stance, has taught that this cement-substance of the cornea 

 is tunneled by a system of communicating canals, and that 

 it is this system of canals which is not stained by silver. 



The author dissents from this opinion, believing that the 

 demonstration of layers of flat cells covering free spaces in 

 the cornea, and of the stellate cells as being situated in spaces 

 formed by the separation of these layers from each other at 

 given points warrants the conclusion that Recklinghausen's 

 Saft-kandlche7i are not closed canals, but are spaces left by 

 apposed membranes receding from each other. In narrower 

 spaces thus left the branches of the stellate cells ramify. 

 Recklinghausen confounded these spaces between the layers 

 {Saft-kandlchen) with Bowman's corneal tubes, which the 

 author subsequently confounded^ with the lymphatic chan- 

 nels in which the nerves lie. 



The corneal tubes described by Bov/man are different both 

 from the so-called Saft-kandlchen of Recklinghausen and 

 from the lymph-channels of the nerves. They are spaces 

 between the primary bundles of the cornea, and have never 

 been described or figured as white spaces in a silvered cornea. 

 In Schweigger-Seidel's plates the injected mass is seen 

 penetrating these straight spaces or corneal tubes, and the 

 author has seen them indicated by rows of fine black gran- 

 ules in silver preparations. 



Recklinghausen's Saft-kandlchen and Bowman's corneal 

 tubes are neither of them closed channels. The Saft-kan- 

 dlchen are spaces between the laminae or larger bundles, and 

 the corneal tubes are the spaces between the primary bundles 

 of fibrillary tissue of which the larger bundles are composed. 

 It is evident that the size of the spaces may vary in accord- 

 ance with the quantity of lymph fluid that passes along the 

 channels, an increase of the calibre of these latter involving 

 no other change than an increase in the extent to which the 

 layers and bundles are separated from each other. 



This doctrine, in its full integrity, is noAV — based on the 

 facts detailed above — sought to be applied to hyaline car- 

 tilage, in Avhich the author's preparations show that both the 

 stellate and the parallel systems of lymph-channels exist. 

 The parallel system — corresponding to Bowman's tubes in 

 the cornea — has been shown by an application of the silver 

 method which has not yet succeeded for the cornea, the pro- 

 duction, namely, of straight colourless spaces between darkly 

 stained primary bundles. 



In interpreting the significance of the epithelial layers 

 1 'Lancet,' Teb. 14., 1874. 



VOL. XVI.— 'NEW BER. B 



