OF THE ABSORBENT VESSELS. 



125 



The one nearer the intestines, dispersed, small, and resembling 

 beans in shape; the other, nearer the receptaculum chyli, large 

 and aggregated." 



b 



a, Small intestine, so pushed 



aside as to display the 

 lacteal vessels running 

 from them to their glands 

 or ganglia in the mesen- 

 tery. 



b, The thoracic duct, ascend- 



ing in front of the spine. 



c, The aorta cut short. 



If a gland is well injected, the numerous ramifications of the 

 absorbents prevent cells from appearing, and it seems only a 

 closely compacted collection of lacteals ; but, if injected less 

 minutely, cells are very evident, and distinct from the convolu- 

 tions and ramifications of vessels. e " If an absorbent gland of 

 a horse is filled with quicksilver and dried, and then carefully 

 slit open, the cells will be seen of a large size, and bristles may 

 with ease be passed through the openings by which they com- 

 municate." It is imagined that the vasa inferentia (or vessels 

 running into a gland) pour their contents into these cells, and that 

 the efferentia (or the vessels running from a gland) afterwards 

 absorb it from them. The inferentia are fewer, in general, than 

 the efferentia of the same gland. 



" It has been enquired whether lacteals exist also in the large 

 intestines, and their existence has been advocated, from the 

 effects of particular injections, nutrient, inebriating, &c., and also 

 from the circumstance that the faeces, if retained for any length 



e Wilson, Lectures on the Blood, <jfC. p. 203. Mr. Abernethy described them 

 in the whale, as well as in the horse. Phil. Trans. 1796. 



K 



