692 SYNOPSIS OF CONTINENTAL VETERINARY JOURNALS. 
3. “ That true pulmonary cauterisation in the horse leads to 
well-marked plastic pneumonia and pleurisy.” 
“It remains to ascertain whether this operation is of any 
theraDeutic value. The preceding experiments ought to en¬ 
courage us to make some attempts in this line in most of our 
domestic animals. Perhaps it will be useful in some forms 
of pneumonia and pulmonary tuberculosis. This must be 
proved by more experiments.” 
Cartilaginous change of the Right Auricle of the Heart, a 
condition serving to assist in the elucidation of a physiolo¬ 
gical point, and suggesting a question of pathogenesis. By 
M. J. Hugues, Military Veterinarian (1st. class), extracted 
from Journal cle la Societe Roy ale des Sciences Naturelles et 
Medicates, of which the author is a corresponding member. 
The auricles are said to drive the blood into the ventricles, 
but we incline to consider them wholly passive, merely dila¬ 
tations or mouths of the venous canals. The thinness of 
their walls and the feebleness of their contractions show 
this, and the opinion is confirmed by the results of exami¬ 
nation in living animals ; but we have no better proof of the 
uselessness of the auricles as active organs than the lesion 
which is above named affords us. These remarks were 
elicited by a case which came under the author's notice in 
which a horse succumbed to complicated internal disorder, 
and, on post-mortem examination, it was found that the heart 
was increased in size, especially on the right side of the 
auricular mass, where it was hard, yielding but little to 
pressure by the hand ; the right auricle being completely 
cartilaginous, composed of three cartilaginous pieces united 
together by a sort of fibro-serous ligament. “ The largest 
part continued the curvature of the ventricle, being of an 
elliptical form, with outer face convex, inner concave; 
longest diameter, 14 centimetres; shortest, 9; thickness, 
centimetres at the centre; diminishing towards the borders 
to 7-8 mm., or even less. The next largest portion, meet¬ 
ing the preceding by its posterior margin, irregularly, was 
angular, and measured 7 centimetres by 4. Its thickness was 
almost everywhere the same, 7-8 mm. The third piece, 
situated in front, was a small parallelogram of the same 
thickness as the last. These pieces were of an essentially 
cartilaginous structure, with difficulty divisible by the knife, 
and wholly devoid of muscular fibres.” “ Our biblio¬ 
graphical researches have revealed to us only three such 
cases, two related in France and one in England, in each 
the right auricle was the part effected. Are we to infer that 
this is less indispensable than the left ? ” “ From a patho- 
