58 ON CORRELATIONS OF GROWTH, "WITH A SPECIAL EXAMPLE 



proceed to detail, an excess of some material, or it possesses some 

 material in excess over its requirements ; in either case • tauto- 

 geneous ' growths spring up, in the one case to elaborate, in the 

 other to consume, that excess of material. The history of patho- 

 logical tumours is but an illustration of the latter of these divisions. 

 The severity of our struggle for existence has called into being so 

 rigid a law of parsimony, as to render it difficult to give illustra- 

 tions of this class of tautogeneous growths from physiological 

 nutrition. But though difficult, it is not impossible. I proceed to 

 illustrate the former of these two divisions by an account of certain 

 structures observed by me in a recent dissection of a young porpoise. 

 The animal was a young Phocaena communis, but it had attained at 

 least four-fifths of its full size, weighing as it did 60 lbs. and being 

 47 \ inches in length. 



On either side the aorta, just where it became free from the 

 diaphragm, on passing into the abdomen, two elongated bodies 

 were to be seen, lying in close contact with the posterior part of 

 its calibre for a length of as much as three inches. Their width 

 was about the fourth of an inch, and this width was maintained for 

 their entire length. Their external surface was smooth, only a little 

 lobulated at their upper end and internal margin. They possessed 

 a readily detachable nbro-cellular capsule. They were reddish in 

 colour, firm to the touch, on section at first homogeneous, but sub- 

 sequently showing to careful inspection numerous orifices of cut 

 vessels, though very little fibrous stroma. Their upper ends lay 

 behind, and in contact with the posterior half of each supra-renal 

 capsule. This relation will show that the structures in question 

 could not have been abnormally persistent Wolffian bodies, which 

 indeed further particulars will yet further prove. 



These structures, when examined by the microscope, were seen 

 to be all but wholly made up of such cells as we get from the 

 Malpighian bodies in the spleen, or indeed from the cortical part of 

 a lymphatic gland, namely, circular nucleated cells with granular 

 contents, of a size somewhat less than that of a red blood 

 corpuscle. 



Functionally, these structures may be regarded as identical with 

 lymphatic glands ; morphologically, I consider them different ; on 

 account, first, of their symmetrically elongated tongue-like shape, 

 all but entirely smooth and unlobulated, and secondly, on account 





