During a more favourable season, moderately sized bits of the skinned ear of a cat, which includes cartilage, areolar and elastic tissue, were placed on three leaves.  Some of the glands were touched with saliva, which caused prompt inflection.  Two of the leaves began to re-expand after three days, and the third on the fifth day.  The fluid residue left on their discs was now examined, and consisted in one case of perfectly transparent, viscid matter; in the other two cases, it contained some elastic tissue and apparently remnants of half digested areolar tissue.

Fibro-cartilage (from between the vertebrae of the tail of a sheep).  Moderately sized and small bits (the latter about 1/20 of an inch) were placed on nine leaves.  Some of these were well and some very little inflected.  In the latter case the bits were dragged over the discs, so that they were well bedaubed with the secretion, and many glands thus irritated.  All the leaves re-expanded after only two days; so that they were but little excited by this substance.  The bits were not liquefied, but were certainly in an altered condition, being swollen, much more transparent, and so tender as to disintegrate very easily.  My son Francis prepared some artificial gastric juice, which was proved efficient by quickly dissolving fibrin, and suspended portions of the fibro-cartilage in it.  These swelled and became hyaline, exactly like those exposed to the secretion of Drosera, but were not dissolved.  This result surprised me much, as two physiologists were of opinion that fibro-cartilage would be easily digested by gastric juice.  I therefore asked Dr. Klein to examine the specimens; and [page 105] he reports that the two which had been subjected to artificial gastric juice were “in that state of digestion in which we find connective tissue when treated with an acid, viz. swollen, more or less hyaline, the fibrillar bundles having become homogeneous and lost their fibrillar structure.”  In the specimens which had been left on the leaves of Drosera, until they re-expanded, “parts were altered, though only slightly so, in the same manner as those subjected to the gastric juice as they had become more transparent, almost hyaline, with the fibrillation of the bundles indistinct.”  Fibro-cartilage is therefore acted on in nearly the same manner by gastric juice and by the secretion of Drosera.

Bone.—­Small smooth bits of the dried hyoidal bone of a fowl moistened with saliva were placed on two leaves, and a similarly moistened splinter of an extremely hard, broiled mutton-chop bone on a third leaf.  These leaves soon became strongly inflected, and remained so for an unusual length of time; namely, one leaf for ten and the other two for nine days.  The bits of bone were surrounded all the time by acid secretion.  When examined under a weak power, they were found quite softened, so that they were readily penetrated by a blunt needle, torn into fibres, or compressed.  Dr. Klein was so kind as to make sections