o. BERNER. M.-N. Kl. 



I found nothing specially remarkable about the connective tissue and 

 the blood-vessels. 



Microtomic sections through the parathyroid also revealed abnormal 

 conditions. In the central part of the organ there was a greater abundance 

 of connective tissue than in the peripheral part, the greatest amount being 

 grouped about the blood-vessels (fig. ii). 



With regard to the bodily condition of the hen I should add that it 

 might be characterised as fairly good. In any case I would draw attention 

 to the fact that it was not particular!}' thin, although this might have been 

 expected in a bird that was killed when dying of a malignant tumour and 

 with its organism covered with metastases. 



To recapitulate — the autopsy showed that the hen had suffered from 

 anomalies of development which affected both the oviduct and the ovary. 

 The ovary must be characterised as hypoplastic. It therefore did not 

 contain so large a number of eggs as a normal ovar}- would have con- 

 tained, but what there were were very well developed and surrounded by about 

 as large a number of lutein-cells as in a normal hen. As we know, further, 

 that the ovary reserrbles the other endocrine organs in that the presence 

 of onh' a small remnant of it may prevent the symptoms of insufficiency 

 from appearing, we are not justified in connecting the smallness of the ovary 

 with the peculiar appearance of the bird. The cause must therefore be 

 sought elsewhere, and although I think I have proved, in other papers published 

 in the „Norsk Jæger- og Fiskerforenings Tidsskrift", on a typical appear- 

 ances occurring in our common wild gallinacean birds, that the appearance 

 in the hens is to be ascribed to disturbances in development that have 

 affected the ovary, I consider the cause in the present case to be found 

 in the suprarenal tumour. The changes found in the thyroid and para- 

 thyroid glands can hardly be connected with the animal's exterior, but 

 they show that the interplay- of these organs has been displayed. It is 

 interesting, however, to notice that Krabbe, in his work on pubertas 

 præcox, mentions the possibility of an antagonistic action between the supra- 

 renal cortex and the parathyroid, but no such action, he saN's, has been, 

 proved. 



In the study of the endocrine function of the suprarenal gland, two 

 exceedingly important sources of information are Addison's disease and 

 the production of adrenaline. As these are both, however, so well known, 

 and as, in both cases, it is the medullary substance of the suprarenal gland 

 that is of importance, I will not dwell upon them here, for in my subject 

 it is the cortex of the suprarenal that is of importance. 



The knowledge of the relationship in which the cortical substance of 

 the suprarenal gland stands to a group of clinical phenomena, is of recent 

 date, and it was not until after the publication, in 1905, of a work by two 

 English physicians, Bulloch and Seoueira, that a number of morbid 



