140 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



tightly packed together in the interstices of the fibrous 

 reticulum, and here and there this is reduced to a mimimum. 



Even the naked-eye appearance of the hand-sections 

 suggests that the growths are encapsulated, for the boundaries 

 are always very definite, although none of the tumours can be 

 " shelled-out." Fig. 6, PL IV, represents a section through 

 the margin of one of the larger growths, as seen under a low- 

 power lens. The closely stippled part on the left is the locus 

 of the growth, which has the same characters as are represented 

 in fig. 5, PI. IV ; on the right are muscle fibres cut slightly 

 obliquely. The texture of these muscle bundles is rather loose ; 

 they are loaded, in some places, with fat cells ; and there is 

 a rather abundant inter-fibrillar connective tissue reticulum, 

 in which, of course, the fat occurs. Between these muscle 

 fibres and the neoplasm is the capsule, composed of bundles of 

 rather coarse connective tissue fibres, with very many small 

 nuclei. 



This capsule appears to exist round all the nodular masses. 

 The latter are of various sizes, and appear therefore to be 

 growing, but they are so sharply delimited from the surrounding 

 tissues that one cannot speak of them as malignant in character, 

 in spite of their resemblance to some sarcomatous tissues. 

 The loss of the skin over the surface of the large growth, and 

 the liquefaction in the centres of some of the other tumours, 

 are due to necrosis which is doubtless the result of the very 

 imperfect vascular supply of these formations. 



Fibrosis of the Liver in a Conger. — Plate IV, figs. 2 — 4. 



This appears to be the nature of some abnormal conditions 

 of the liver of the conger (as well as that of some other fishes) 

 noticed by Mr. Richard Elmhirst, of the Millport Biological 

 Station. In these fishes the liver contained small, round, 

 hard nodules, easily felt on handling the organ. The nodules 

 were about 2 to 5 mm. in diameter. Some were cut out, 



