262 OF THE ABSORBENT VESSELS. 



admits a question. I myself have never been able to 

 trace them so far as to discover their immediate con- 

 nections with the villi, but they appear to arise here 

 and there in the coats of the intestines, by a conspi- 

 cuous trunk, and we may conjecture that they take up 

 the chyle from the cellular structure into which it is 

 first drawn by the villi. This I have in fact observed 

 repeatedly in puppies, after making them swallow a 

 solution of indigo, according to the celebrated expe- 

 riment of Lister,* an hour or two before opening them 

 alive. (A) 



423. The trunks just mentioned run some inches 

 along the surface of the intestines, under the external 

 coat, sometimes meandering in an angular course, 

 before they reach the mesentery. 



424. In their course through the mesentery they run 

 into the mesenteric glands, of which there are two 

 series. The one, nearer the intestines, dispersed, 

 small, and resembling beans in shape ; the other, nearer 

 the receptaculum chyli, large, and aggregated. 



425. Both appear nothing more than closely-com- 

 pacted collections of lacteals, interwoven with innu- 

 merable blood-vessels, f and retarding the course of the 

 chyle ; to the end, perhaps, that it may be more inti- 

 mately and perfectly assimilated to an animal nature, 

 previously to its entrance into the thoracic duct and its 

 mixture with the blood, (B) 



426. It has been inquired whether lacteals exist also 

 in the large intestines, and their existence has been 



• Philos. Trans. No. 143, compared with No. 275. 



t Bocrhaavc and Ruysch, De fabrica glandularum opuscitlitm. LB. 1722. 

 4to. p. 81. 



