on the Spleen. 14,1 
vein has its serum more strongly impregnated with the co- 
louring matter, than that of the blood in the other veins of 
the body ; and when the stomach is kept without liquids, al- 
though colouring matter is carried into the system from the 
intestinal canal by the ordinary channels, no particular evi- 
dence of it is met with in the spleen or its veins. 
That the caecum and the portion of the colon immediately 
beyond it, is found ( in the ass ) to be at all times filled with 
liquids, even when none has been received into the sto- 
mach for several days, and there is a greater number of ab- 
sorbent vessels for carrying liquids from the colon into the 
thoracic duct, than from any other part of the body. The 
colon is therefore a reservoir, from which the blood vessels 
are occasionally supplied with liquids. 
Mr. Sewell informs me, that the same observation applies 
in a still greater degree to the horse. 
That coloured liquids taken into the human stomach, under 
some circumstances, begin to pass off by urine in seventeen 
minutes, continue to do so for some hours, and then dis- 
appear ; they are again met with in the urine, after the 
colouring matter is known to have arrived at the great intes- 
tines, by its passing off by the bowels. 
From the above facts, the following conclusions may be 
drawn. 
That the liquids received into the stomach beyond what 
are employed for digestion, are not wholly carried out of it by 
the common absorbents of the stomach, or the canal of the 
intestines, but are partly conveyed through the medium of 
the spleen into the circulation of the liver. 
The vessels which communicate between the stomach and 
