196 
COMPTE RENDU OF THE 
ing been nourished with the chyme and reproduced, die and decay. 
The number of these various animalculi is so great, that in five cen- 
tigrammes of alimentary matter, taken from the two stomachs of a 
sheep, there were found to be from fifteen to twenty; hence it may 
reasonably be inferred that one-fourth part of the matters con- 
tained in these two viscera consists of animalculse. Therefore, 
sheep that have on an average from four to eight kilogrammes of 
alimentary matter in the first and second stomachs, will have from 
one to two kilogrammes of animalculse, forming a portion of the 
matter that has undergone digestion. 
The consequence of this fact will be that, although large 
herbivorous animals, when in a state of nature, only take vegetable 
substances into their stomachs, a portion of these are destined to 
give birth to a large quantity of living animals of inferior deve- 
lopment, which, by their decomposition, furnish animalized pro- 
ducts for the nutrition of "he organs. 
The villosities of the thin intestines, examined in the living 
animal, have a threefold movement, elongatory, contracting, and 
lateral. The surface of these villosities is covered with an epithe- 
lium composed of cells, the disposition and openings of which 
constitute a peculiar apparatus destined to divide the chyle into 
very minute particles previous to its introduction into the chylifer* 
ous vessels. It is, also, the business of these cells to imbibe the 
substances dissolved by digestion, and cause them to penetrate into 
the venous vessels of the villosities. 
Independently of this epithelium, each villosity is composed of 
a central chyliferous canal, and a vascular layer that can be 
injected. 
The pure chyle, taken from the chyliferous vessels of the intes- 
tine of an animal killed while in the act of digesting food, is not 
formed of globules, as many physiologists have supposed, but of 
very minute molecules, floating in a white and slightly opaline 
fluid. This fluid, thus constituted, enters into the blood and cir- 
culates with it, and is distributed throughout the whole organ- 
ization. 
The globules, as physiologists have termed those of chyle and 
of blood, are neither more nor less than those of lymph mingled 
with these two fluids. 
The rosy hue sometimes assumed by the chyle in the thoracic 
canal is caused by the presence of globules of blood, that have 
become accidentally mingled with this fluid. 
The lymph of the dog, taken at the opening of vessels, contains 
not only the globules common to lymph, of the various sizes already 
known, but also some rough or bristling globules not yet described. 
All these consist of a thin covering, and one or two granulated 
