256 
SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
Methods for Collecting* and Estimating the Number of Small 
Animals in Sea-Water.* — Dr. H. C. Sorby, when collecting moderately 
small animals, uses a brown holland bag, at the bottom of which there 
is an arrangement by which brass wire sieves with meshes of various 
sizes can be fixed to a sort of bayonet-joint. Another method is to 
collect water in a special bottle at various depths, and to pour 2b gallons 
through a sieve with openings of about one-liundredth of an inch in 
diameter. From this the animals are washed off into a few ounces of 
water. The numbers of the various kinds are afterwards counted in 
a small deep narrow trough filled over and over again until the whole 
quantity has been examined. The number of each kind per gallon can 
then be easily calculated. 
C2) Preparing- Objects. 
Examining Spermatheca in Newts and Salamanders.y— Dr. B. F. 
Kingsbury adopted the following procedure : — Serial sections of the 
cloaca were made transverse to the long axis of the body, to which were 
added, in Plethodon, Desmognathus , and Ambly stoma, series cut sagitally. 
The cloaca was dissected off and placed in Fish’s mixture (50 per cent, 
alcohol 1000 ecm., mercuric chloride 5 grm., picric acid 1 grm., glacial 
acetic acid 10 ccm.). It was then washed in 50 per cent, alcohol one day, 
and passed through successively 70, 82, and 95 per cent, alcohols, ether- 
alcohol equal parts, remaining one day in each. It was placed in 1^-2 
per cent, collodion for two days and 6 per cent, collodion for three days, 
and imbedded. The collodion was hardened in chloroform and cleared in 
Fish’s castor- thyme oil mixture, in which the sections were cut. They 
were arranged in serial order on the knife, from which they were re- 
moved by tissue-paper, and then placed upon the slide ; all oil possible 
was absorbed with tissue-paper, and the sections secured by melting the 
collodion with a few drops of ether-alcohol. A few minutes (5-10) in 
95 per cent, alcohol sufficed to remove all the oil, when they were 
treated as usual. Gage’s hasmatoxylin, with eosin, erythrosin, or picric- 
alcohol, as a counterstain were employed ; Yasale’s clarifier (xylol 3 parts, 
carbolic acid 1 part) was used. This was supplemented by teasing fresh 
spermathecae upon the slide to detect the living zoosperms. 
Microscopical Diagnosis of Uterine Growths.i — Mr. H. G. Plimmer 
points out the importance of histological examination of uterine tumours, 
and deals with the modern methods of investigation. During the past 
three years he has examined 92 cases of uterine tumours, 72 of them from 
the cervix being diagnosed as cancers, though 12 of these were found to 
be benign in nature. The tissue to be examined should be placed in the 
following solution for 24 hours : sodium chloride 7* 5 grm., glacial acetic 
acid 10 ccm., distilled water 1 litre, mercuric chloride to saturation. It 
should then be washed in running water for 2-3 hours, and then in 
alcohols of increasing strength up to absolute for three consecutive days. 
The sections are best stained with Mayer’s hsemalum and contrast-stained 
with 1 per cent, solution of Congo red. Kiihne’s aniseed oil method, 
preceded by fixation in 30 per cent, solution of formalin, is also adopted 
* Rep. Brit. Ass., 1895, p. 730. 
t Trans. Amer. Micr. 8oc., xvii. (1896) pp. 261-95. 
j Reprint from British Gynaecological Journal, Nov. 1895, 14 pp. 
