The blood-corpuscles of the annelides / by Professor Rolleston.

  • Rolleston, George, 1829-1881.
Date:
[1878?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The blood-corpuscles of the annelides / by Professor Rolleston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    3/22
    THE BLOOD-CORPUSCLES OF THE ANNEL1DES. Professor Rolleston, M.D., F.R.S. By Professor Lankester, in a recent number of the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science1 (January 1878, p. 70-73), makes certain statements relating to me, the chief tangible basis for which is the following quotation from p. cxxix. of my Forms of Animal Life, published in 1870 :—“ In a few Annelides, again (Syllidea armata, the Opheliae, the Cirratulida, and the Stauro- cephala and Branchiobdella), the pseud-haemal system contains corpusculated blood, and communicates with the perivisceral 1 Professor Lankester writes as follows:—“ Tlie entirely original introduction of Branchiobdella into the list of Annulata with corpusculated ‘pseud-haemal fluid ’ is difficult to explain, since, from what follows, it seems unlikely that Dr George Rolleston had made himself acquainted, by actual observation, with any of the genera to which he alludes. On page 238 of the second edition of Gegen- baur’s Grundzuge, a somewhat awkwardly introduced reference to Dorner’s paper on Branchiobdella might lead an unwary reader to suppose that the statements there given on the authority of Kupffer and Leydig, with reference to the proli- feration of blood-corpuscles from the valves of the vessels in other leeches (Piscicola and Clepsine), have reference to Branchiobdella, which they have not. A glance at Dorner’s excellent memoir on Branchiobdella would, however, suffice to satisfy a conscientious bookmaker that the vascular fluid of Branchiobdella has not yet been shown to contain corpuscles, and that it notoriously differs from the vascular fluid of true leeches, in that it most certainly does not ‘ communicate with the perivisceral cavity so as to form a lacunar circulation.’ The introduction of Branchiobdella into the list given by Dr George Rolleston is, it would seem, due to his having misunderstood the German authors. The statement that ‘the pseud-hsemal system communicates with the perivisceral cavity so as to form a lacunar circulation in Syllidea, the Ophelia, the Cirratulida, and the Staurocepliali ’ is more difficult to account for than is that relation to Branchiobdella, since whilst there is here no foundation whatever for such a statement in fact, the description and figures of Claparede with reference to two at least of these genera are admir- able in clearness and detail. We are driven to the conclusion that Dr George Rolleston has acquainted himself with the introduction without having consulted the body of Claparede’s work Whilst I regret to find myself unable to ac- cede to the statements in the text-book which I[have quoted above, I may point out that the errors therein contained are not traceable to any attempt on the author’s part to make original observations in the domain of morphology, but are rather due to a failure to observe accurately the contents of books.” It will be observed that while some of these statements relate to matters of fact, and others to matters of inference based upon facts, or supposed facts, a third set consists mostly of expressions of Professor Lankcster’s personal opinions. I shall deal only with the two former sets of statements. VOL. XII. 2 D