398 
Foreign Department. 
ON THE SALIVARY GLANDS IN MAN AND THE 
VERTEBRATED ANIMALS. 
M. Bernard has recently laid before the Academy of Sci¬ 
ences at Paris a paper containing Researches into the com¬ 
parative Anatomy and Physiology of the Salivary Glands in 
Man and Vertehrated Animals. We submit a Resume of it:— 
The salivary apparatus in man and mammiferous animals, in 
whom it is exhibited in the highest perfection, comprises three 
principal glands,— the parotid, the submaxillary, and the sub¬ 
lingual; to which we may add numerous bucco-lcibial glands, 
and the zygomatic gland, or Nuck’s gland, only to be found in 
carnivorous animals and some ruminants. 
From the structural analogy existing between these different 
salivary glands, anatomists have always considered that their 
secretory products, which all become diffused in the mouth, 
possessed identical properties, and were intended to serve one 
common purpose. And this similitude of organization it is that 
has induced them to put the pancreas in the same class of organs, 
under the name of the salivary gland of the abdomen. 
The author of the paper before the Society has shewn, in a 
preceding memoir, that investigations into the properties and 
uses of the pancreatic juice have served to distinguish this gland 
from all others. This is exactly what he has in view to ascer¬ 
tain in the present paper, viz. whether the different salivary 
glands furnish secretions of similar or dissimilar properties and 
uses. 
M. Bernard’s paper admits of consideration under three heads, 
anatomical, chemical, and physiological. 
The anatomical investigation of it has led to the deduction, 
that the salivary glands of the different classes of vertebrated 
animals exhibit two types of structure:—1, the conglomerate 
character , as found in man and all mammiferous animals; 2, the 
follicular character, as seen in such birds and reptiles as possess 
salivary glands. We are not, however, to infer from this, that 
all the salivary glands even in the same animal possess identical 
functions. Similitude of organization only tends to prove the 
impossibility of arriving through anatomy at a natural classifi¬ 
cation of the salivary glands. The author proposes the opposite 
method of classification, according to the physical characters of 
their secretions, especially with reference to the demonstrable 
uses they are intended to serve; by which means we arrive at 
