22 
DR. C. H. JONES ON THE STRUCTURE, DEVELOPMENT 
The results stand thus : — 
Albuminous food per 1000 grs. of liver .... 20-13 grs. of sugar. 
Saccharine food per 1000 grs. of liver .... 31-66 grs. of sugar. 
Oily food per 1000 grs. of liver 2T13 grs. of sugar. 
Hence the saccharine diet produced fully one-third more sugar than the albuminous 
or oily. M. Bernard however has distinctly proved that the liver forms sugar from 
the blood when only albuminous food is taken, so that it seems certain that a con- 
verting change must go on in the organ, which is exerted not only upon saccharine, 
but also upon albuminous and probably upon oily matters. One of the results of 
this converting change may sometimes be biliary matter, which would then appear in 
the cells, as we have seen that it occasionally does ; but in the majority of cases ob- 
servation seems to testify that sugar and oil are the products or lesults of the energj 
of the hepatic cells. 
I would for a moment refer again to a point noticed in my previous paper, viz. that 
at the moment when the liver traced in the ascending animal series assumes a solid 
'parenchymal form, it receives a portal vein which is distributed exclusively to the paren- 
chyma : this at once seems to imply a special relation between the two, that the one is 
developed for the sake of the other, and that theii functions aie cooidinate. A portal 
vein is not needed for the secretion of bile ; this product is most copiously formed in 
the follicular livers of Mollusca, which are supplied by an hepatic artery only ; and it 
therefore is extremely probable that the parenchyma is added for some further and 
different purpose ; this purpose being, as I have suggested, the temporary abstraction 
from the blood of such matters as being absorbed in considerable quantity from the 
intestinal surface could not, without disturbing too far the due crasis of the blood, 
be immediately poured into it. It is impossible to conceive a stiuctuie better fitted 
to fulfil this purpose than the lobules of the liver, which are pei-colated from their 
circumference to their centre by capillary blood streams. 
The function of the parenchyma 1 believe, then, to consist chiefly in exerting a mo- 
difying action on the portal blood and preparing a product which enters the circula- 
tion, and is probably consumed in the service of respiration. The presence of much 
oil in the cells seems chiefly to depend on the existence of an unusual amount in the 
blood, which may be occasioned by various causes ; thus the fatty liver of fish 
and of the foetus seems connected with a low degree of respiration; that of phthisis 
partly with increased absorption of fat, partly with diminished respiration; that of 
sheep fed on oil-cake with the oily nature of the food. To three of these cases cer- 
tainly, if not to all, the term fatty degeneration is quite inapplicable; the condition is 
that simply of oily accumulation. 
The function of the excretory ducts, if my description of their relations is correct, 
is not nierely that of conveying forth out of the organ a product already formed ; 
they must act upon certain matters supplied to them wdth an energy of their own, 
and out of these elaborate their secretion themselves. It may be said generally that 
