398 Maine; agricui^turaIv Kxp^riment station. 1912. 



important features of the histology of the hen's oviduct and 

 reviews some of the Hterature. Weidenfeld ('05) has also 

 studied the 'histology of the hen's oviduct. Reference to -these 

 and other papers will be made at the appropriate places in the 

 text. 



After the major portion of the present paper had been 

 written, the writer received the recent paper by Bela ('10) 

 relating to the structure and function of the oviduct in the 

 domestic pigeon. Unfortunately this paper is published in 

 Hungarian which the writer is unable to read. With the aid 

 of a few German notes kindly supplied by Dr. Bela and a care- 

 ful study of the figures the writer has been able to make out 

 some of the more important conclusions of this excellent paper. 

 References to these points have been included in the following 

 paper. 



Material and Methods. 



The material used in the present investigation consisted of 

 the oviducts of Barred Plymouth Rock hens. All oviducts were 

 taken from freshly killed healthy birds. The birds were selected 

 so as to obtain oviducts in various stages, from that of actively 

 laying birds to that of birds which had not laid for several 

 weeks. Since the oviduct of a laying hen is a rather large 

 organ, it was necessary in most cases, to fix only small pieces 

 of the regions desired. In doing this the oviduct was removed 

 from the hen, cut open along one side and spread out on a dis- 

 secting board. A rough outline drawing (actual size) was then 

 made showing the characteristic regions and their limits. Small 

 pieces 5 to 10 mm. square were cut out at the points desired 

 and their position accurately charted on the diagram. These 

 small pieces were fixed, imbedded in parafiin and sectioned in 

 the usual manner. 



For fixation a variety of fluids were used, among which were 

 Flemming's chromo-aceto-osmic mixtures, Gilson's mercuro- 

 nitric solution, osmo-sublimate, suMimate-acetic and Zenker's 

 fluid. The Flemming and Gilson mixtures gave uniformly the 

 best results. 



Sections were cut from 5 to 7 mikrons thick. All staining was 

 done on the slide. The most useful stains employed were the 

 following: Heidenhain's iron-alum-haematoxylin, Delafield's 



