184 NOTES AND MEMORANDA. 



screws have been made. These indicators shouhl move 

 quite stiffly, so as not to be accidentally misplaced when 

 turning the screw heads. 



With the hands upon the triangle and the eye at the 

 microscope tube, the razor can be moved so that its edge 

 shall either make a drawing cut or push straight through the 

 object like a chisel, according as either method or any grada- 

 tion between them suits best the nature of the substance 

 cut. Thus perfectly even slices can be cut, and it is quite 

 easy to take theni in consecutive order even when called off 

 in the midst of the work and compelled to wait half an hour 

 before resuming it. It is a luxury to take off slice after slice 

 and know that there is no danger of losing just the slices you 

 want esjiecially to see. The object is kept wet with glyce- 

 rine, and just as the razor begins to cut, a drop of glycerine 

 is placed on its edge in which the slice floats without 

 sticking ; though care must be taken in the case of very thin 

 and small sections not to lose them in a large drop of glyce- 

 rine in which they would be found with difficulty. By this 

 method slices -soVTr of ^^ inch in thickness, or rather in 

 thinness, can be all worked out nicely, though before it was 

 adopted such thin slices were all torn, so as to be unrecog- 

 nisable. Whether a blade can be made to cut any thinner 

 than that has not been tried ; but it may be remarked that 

 the first razor blade used gave out at ir+Vu iwch thick, and 

 would not take an edge capable of cutting finer than that." — 

 American Naturalist. 



Dr. Reijner on Synovial Membranes. — We are reluctantly 

 compelled to defer till our next number a paper by Dr. Reijner, 

 of Dorpat, communicating the results of an investigation 

 conducted in Professor Sanderson's laboratory, at University 

 College, on the articular cartilages and synovial membranes. 

 This is in continuation of a previous memoir by Dr. Reijner 

 on the same subject published in the ' Deutsche Zeitschrift 

 fUr Chirurgie.' 



