168 PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. K'iS Je'STlff 
' London Microscopical Journal ' for 1868. At the time lie published 
that article no microscopist had succeeded in seeing the true lines in 
any of the bands in this plate beyond the 15th. This spring, how- 
ever, with a Powell and Lealand immersion y^^h, he had resolved the 
four higher bands, and now showed photographs of them. These 
bands presented the following number of lines, — the 16th 48, the 
17th 51, the 18th 54, and the 19th 57, each in about ^oVo*^ 
inch. Papers announcing this success had been sent to the ' Monthly 
MiCKOscopicAL Journal ' and to ' Silliman's Journal.' A number of 
anatomical objects was also exhibited. 
Hie Origin of the Gall-ducts. — Dr. R. Cresson Stiles, of New York, 
has been studying the livers of cattle which have died of hepatic 
disease in which the bile-ducts became charged with biliary matter, 
and he believes that his researches have led him to accurate conclu- 
sions as to the mode of termination of these canals. He thinks he 
has proved the existence of minute terminal reticulations, and states 
that he has demonstrated them to the New York Academy of Medicine. 
He writes as follows to one of the New York medical journals : — 
" Let it be understood that I have nowhere claimed to have made a 
'discovery,' but simply to have made certain what others believed 
they had demonstrated, although their opinions have not received the 
support of the highest authorities in histology. The following 
passage, from Kolliker's ' Handbuch der Gewebelehre,' will show pre- 
cisely what I have seen and demonstrated before the New York 
Academy of Medicine, and to a large number of skilled histologists : 
— ' The teachings of Budge and Schmidt are entirely different, which 
are, that they believe the}-^ have demonstrated, by means of injection, 
in the interior of the acini, between the liver cells, the finest gall- 
ducts. According to Budge, the gall-ducts suddenly contract at the 
surface of the acinus to •002"', and fine canals of this calibre extend in 
the form of a network between the liver-cells throughout the acinus. 
Schmidfs confused statements may be seen in his work, which, 
however, is endorsed by another worker, to the effect that he has 
iijjected from the gall-ducts a network of fine canals of the '0013 
of a millimetre to the '0014 mm. which pervades the entire acinus, 
and in such wise that the canals never run by the side of the blood- 
vessels, but only between the cells of the liver. All these canals are 
perfectly cylindrical, and apparently of the same thickness, yet a 
membrana propria cannot be demonstrated.' KoUiker regards these 
canals (as he has not seen the preparations of the histologists whose 
opinion he combats) as formed by the escape of the injecting material. 
My own observations on the gall-ducts injected by the tenacious bile 
peculiar to the Texas cattle disease, prove that this explanation is in- 
admissible. Kolliker says, furthermore, ' Beichert and Henle have 
thought of lymphatics. The tenuity of the canals in question would 
not invalidate this opinion, as Henle believes, for the larvae of frogs 
have just as fine lymphatics with walls ; but the presence of fine 
canals in the interior of the framework of liver-cells, as far as I under- 
stand the development of the liver, makes this opinion entirely 
untenable.' Should this network be one of lymphatics, it is one of 
