THE LYMPHATICS. 317 



of a plexus of lymphatic vessels. As regards the relation of 

 the lymphatics to the glandular part or alveoli, together with 

 their contents, I formerly felt compelled to express myself in 

 opposition to the notion propounded by Ludwig and Noll, 

 although without having entered deeply into the subject, prin- 

 cipally because, whilst it seemed to me improbable, that the 

 alveoli of the glands in question should contain blood-vessels, 

 and at the same time communicate with the lymphatics ; and, 

 in the second place, because in cases where the vasa afferentia 

 and efferentia were full of milk-white chyle, I was never able 

 to perceive similarly coloured contents in the alveoli. These 

 facts, indeed, still retain all their weight with me; but they 

 are now more than outweighed by further experience, so that 

 it appears very doubtful whether they justify the conclusions 

 which I formerly thought might be deduced from them. For 

 I find, like Ludwig, in a considerable number of injections in 

 the human subject, Dog (cervical glands), and Ox (lumbar 

 glands), that it is impossible to fill lymphatic vessels in the 

 interior of the glands, and that the injection either colours 

 only the ramifications of the vasa inferentia upon the gland, 

 or when it runs further, as it may be more easily made to do 

 in animals than in Man, it enters the alveoli, which it fills 

 according to their position in the series, and escapes through 

 the vasa efferentia. Induced by the result of these experiments, 

 I should now, without being desirous of giving a definitive 

 opinion, be inclined to side with Ludwig, and to deny the 

 existence of any direct connexion between the afferent and 

 efferent lymphatics, or rather to view the alveoli of the glands 

 as a specially modified part of them. In accordance with this 

 notion, the lymph would be poured out into the alveoli, and 

 flow through them in fine divided streams among the elements 

 of which their contents are composed ; and, to this circum- 

 stance, it is probably owing that it never has a milk-white 

 colour. In this process it is possible that some of the cells of 

 these contents, which so closely resemble the lymph-corpuscles, 

 may be detached and become disintegrated, whence the chyle 

 of the vasa efferentia abounds more in morphological elements, 

 then the fluid conveyed by the vasa afferentia. At the same 

 time, I am decidedly opposed to the view which would regard 

 the morphological contents of the alveoli as directly appertain- 



