424 ANALYSIS OF THE BLOOD OF THE VENA PORTA, ETC. 
and principally the vena cava inferior, contain a blood which 
is as concentrated as arterial blood, or which is perhaps even 
still more concentrated. All my experiments seem to show 
that a remarkable quantity of blood globules disappears in the 
general capillary vessels. The observation that the density 
of the blood of the vena cava inferior resembles that of the 
arterial blood, or even exceeds it, does not depend only on the 
expulsion of the water by the urinary secretion, but principally 
on the effluence of the blood of the hepatic vein ; it is this 
which the analyses of the blood of a horse which had not drunk 
anything for 24 hours before being killed have proved to me 
in a striking manner. The comparison of all these analyses 
seems to prove, at the same time, that in the liver tw*o functions 
operate separately — namely, the formation of sugar and 
globules of the blood, and that of the bile, as M. Bernard 
foresaw and established a long time ago. 
The blood of the smaller veins contains more fibrine than 
arterial blood, and than that of the vena cava and the jugular 
vein. In the vena cava, I found half as much fibrine as in 
arterial blood. 
Arterial blood always contains more mineral salts than 
venous blood. — Chemist . 
[In this, and a former extracted article by M. L. Figuier, 
p. 291, we have given the theories of the existence of sugar 
in the liver, first demonstrated by M. C. Bernard. That 
chemist regards its origin as being the fibrine of the blood, 
which he found to disappear in the liver, and he regards 
sugar as a secretion proper to that organ. M. Figuier, on 
the other hand, contends that its source is the glucose , or 
grape-sugar, ascertained by him to exist in the blood of all 
animals, and believed by him to be derived from the food 
partaken of by them, even if they have been fed for a very 
long time exclusively on animal matters; and he considers it 
not surprising that its accumulation should take place in the 
hepatic organ, the function of which is to depurate the 
blood. This inquiry is doubtless one of great interest, nor 
less so is the paper a Qn the Digestion of Amylaceous Sub- 
stances,” by M. Blondlot, given in the present number.] 
