Fibrous Basis of Bone.—I at first concluded, as already stated, that the secretion could not digest this substance. I therefore asked Dr. Burdon Sanderson to try bone, enamel, and dentine, in artificial gastric juice, and he found that they were after a considerable time completely dissolved. Dr. Klein examined some of the small lamellae, into which part of the skull of a cat became broken up after about a week’s immersion in the fluid, and he found that towards the edges the “matrix appeared rarefied, thus producing the appearance as if the canaliculi of the bone-corpuscles had become larger. Otherwise the corpuscles and their canaliculi were very distinct.” So that with bone subjected to artificial gastric juice complete decalcification precedes the dissolution of the fibrous basis. Dr. Burdon Sanderson suggested to me that the failure of Drosera to digest the fibrous basis of bone, enamel, and dentine, might be due to the acid being consumed in the decomposition of the earthy salts, so that there was none left for the work of digestion. Accordingly, my son thoroughly decalcified the bone of a sheep with weak hydrochloric acid; and seven minute fragments of the fibrous basis were placed on so many leaves, four of the fragments being first damped with saliva to aid prompt inflection. All seven leaves became inflected, but only very moderately, in the course of a day. [page 109] They quickly began to re-expand; five of them on the second day, and the other two on the third day. On all seven leaves the fibrous tissue was converted into perfectly transparent, viscid, more or less liquefied little masses. In the middle, however, of one, my son saw under a high power a few corpuscles, with traces of fibrillation in the surrounding transparent matter. From these facts it is clear that the leaves are very little excited by the fibrous basis of bone, but that the secretion easily and quickly liquefies it, if thoroughly decalcified. The glands which had remained in contact for two or three days with the viscid masses were not discoloured, and apparently had absorbed little of the liquefied tissue, or had been little affected by it.