Miscellaneous. 139 



very small ocular bulbs. These bulbs correspond to a transparent 

 spot in the skin, and present all the essential parts of a normal eye. 

 The spherical crystalline alone preserves an embryonic character. 

 In fact it is formed, not, properly speaking, of fibres, but of cells, 

 some of them rounded, others elongated into tubes. The muscles 

 of the eye, to the number of four, are attached to the sclerotic. 

 Harder's gland is comparatively very large. 



If zoologists are right in assigning to Ccecilia annulata the cha- 

 racter " oculi minuti," they go too far, on the other hand, when they 

 say of C. lumhricoidea "oculi nulli ;" they ought to content them- 

 selves with saying "oculi minutissimi." The eyes are, in fact, 

 always present, although extremely reduced. M. Leydig could dis- 

 tinguish in them a sclerotic and a choroid, but no crj^stalline. 

 Harder's gland is comparatively enormous, no doubt because it has 

 not undergone reduction like the bulb of the eye. The same is pro- 

 bably the case in TijphJops. In these serpents with rudimentary 

 eyes, indeed, M. Duvernoy indicates a lachrymal gland six times as 

 large as the bulb. 



M. Leydig has paid particular attention to the singular organ 

 mentioned by authors, sometimes under the name of false nostril, 

 sometimes under that of lachrymal fossa. By this is meant a cuta- 

 neous pore leading into a canal Avhich is directed obliquely towards 

 the eye. Johannes MiiUer detected in the interior of this canal, in 

 various species, a tentacle or papilla of a tongue-like form. M. 

 Leydig confirms the existence of this organ, and finds moreover that 

 in Ccecilia annulata two tubes, closely adhering to each other, start 

 from the waU of the cavity. These might be taken, at the first 

 glance, for vessels ; but this is not their nature. Their wall does 

 not contain any muscular fibres, but is formed of a single histo- 

 logical element — namely, very fine fibres of connective nature. 

 These tubes reunite at the opposite extremity, forming a loop. An 

 analogous organ exists in Ccecilia lumhricoidea. The functions of 

 this apparatus are in complete obscurity. One might be inclined to 

 regard them as the organs of a special sense, comparable with the 

 " mucus-canals " of fishes. Nevertheless the essential character of 

 a sensorial organ, the existence of a peripheral nervous apparatus, 

 appears to be wanting in it. 



What we know at present of the structure, both internal and ex- 

 ternal, of the Ccecilice tends to separate them from the scaly reptiles, 

 and to approximate them to the Amphibia. "We must, however, 

 admit with M. Leydig that their organization presents an odd mix- 

 ture of characters, of which one reminds us of fishes, another of 

 the amphibia, and a third of the reptiles, M. Leydig thinks that 

 this little order, now so restricted, is only the residue of a group of 

 amphibia formerly developed in abundance, which detached itself 

 from the fishes with the amphibia of the Carboniferous epoch 

 (Archegosawrus (fee.). The affinity of the Ccecilice to the fishes is 

 displayed, as is well known, in the structure of the bodies of their 

 vertebrae, and in the nature of their scales and their arrangement in 

 cutaneous sacs. The kidneys of these animals have also been com- 



