18 LAWSON, ON LIMAX MAXIMUS, 
brown contents, others small, without nuclei, and also a con- 
siderable amount of loosely floating granular particles. The 
duct, on entering one of the lobules, divides into several 
branches, which surround the many-sided compartments, 
and become eventually indistinguishable from the fibrous 
septa; but never have I detected a communication between 
duct and theca, the two portions of the organ being as sepa- 
rate as they are in the human liver, according to the view of 
a recent investigator.* Had there been any distinct con- 
nection, it could not have remained unobserved, since it is 
easily perceived when it does exist, as in the salivary gland. 
The bile is a dark-brown liquid, with a faintly unpleasant 
odour and a nauseous sweetish taste, which is poured in large 
. quantity into the gullet when the animal has been without 
food for some days. Under the microscope it seems a trans- 
parent fluid, suspending many clusters of brown granules, 
and nucleated and non-nucleated endoplasts. . 
General remarks.—Lebert, in a communication to Miiller’s 
‘Archives’ for 1846, has given many figures of the head, 
tongue, and spinous membrane of Limax, but in some in- 
stances, I conceive, he has not accurately depicted the struc- 
ture and form of these organs. The palate, judging from 
his sketch, seems but a mere slip proceeding from the central 
portion of the jaw, which is not the case, the whole 
palate and jaw forming, when flattened out, a complete 
triangle, two of whose sides are slightly concave outwards. 
Again, he has certainly mistaken the arrangement of the 
processes attached to the lingual membrane, inasmuch as he 
has placed them in alternate rows, and has omitted the inter- 
vening mammillary elevations. The head, also, I fancy, is too 
much prolonged. Finally, his representation of the muscular 
fibre I cannot reconcile to anything I have perceived. It 
might, at first sight, seem difficult to put faith in Mr. H. 
Jones’s views of the liver’s functions, the conditions under 
which the hepatic circulation is carried on here being differ- 
ent from those we meet among vertebrata, but this apparent 
difficulty disappears when we know that if the special secre- 
tion were thrown out into the visceral cavity, it would at once 
be taken up by the veins. 
Respiratory System.—The function of respiration is carried 
on by means of atmospheric ‘air introduced into a special 
cavity, containing uumerous blood-vessels upon its surface, 
* “On the Structure, Development, and Function of the Liver.” By 
C, Handfield Jones, M,.D., F.R.S. ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ 1853, 
