142 GULLIVER ON THE MINUTE ANATOMY OF ANIMALS. 



tempted to give either a more precise account than we yet possess of 

 some of the healthy and diseased parts of man and the lower animals, 

 to present certain particulars of structure in novel physiological rela- 

 tions, or to record facts which may appear to have escaped the attention 

 of previous observers : in short, to contribute summary and plain notes 

 concerning numerous detached anatomical points which may perhaps be 

 treated of as profitably in this manner as by set dissertations. 



ON THE LYMPH-GLOBULES OF BIRDS. 



It is well known that the blood of the vertebrate animals contains, 

 besides the numberless red discs, a few pale globules which have very 

 commonly been regarded as those of lymph. In birds, however, the 

 globules which constitute the greater part of the juice of the lymphatic 

 glands are generally rather smaller than the pale globules of the blood ; 

 and, as I have noticed in the Appendix to Gerber's Anatomy, the same 

 fact is observable in the mammalia. Yet the descriptions given since 

 Hewson's time of the lymph- globules of birds have always been drawn 

 from the pale globules of their blood. 



The distinguished inquirer just mentioned, states that the particles of 

 the fluid of the lymphatic glands of birds are oval, like the nuclei of 

 their blood- corpuscles. In the Philosophical Magazine for February 

 1840, I gave an account of the lymph-globules of the Musk Deer, from 

 which it appears that these scarcely differ in size from those of man, 

 notwithstanding the blood-discs of this little ruminant are the smallest 

 at present known ; and although the Camelidae have oval blood-corpus- 

 cles, I found that the globules of the thymus, of the lymphatic glands, 

 and of the pus of these animals, had the usual circular figure, and 

 nearly the same size as the corresponding globules in other mammalia.* 

 It was to be expected, therefore, that the lymph-globules of birds would 

 possess a similar form, and this I have lately ascertained to be the case. 



The lymph- globules of birds are commonly rather smaller than those 

 of mammalia, yet this difference of size is not observable to the same 

 degree in the pale globules of the blood of these two classes. The ac- 

 count of the chemical characters of the lymph-globules of mammalia, 

 as given in the Appendix to Gerber's Anatomy, is generally applicable 

 to the corresponding globules of birds. Professor Wagner observes, 

 that the chemical properties of the pale globules of the blood and the 

 nuclei of the blood-discs of birds and reptiles are identical. This ap- 

 pears to be true in most respects ; but in certain experiments the two 



* See Medico-Chir. Trans., vol. xxiii; and Lancet, 1840-41, vol ii, p. 101 . 



