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Show 24 MR. H. N. MOSELEY ON SOME CORALS. [Jan. 20, round the male Elephant's legs; but on each occasion he snapped them like so much thread, but did not attempt to leave the place until the 8th January 1864. On that date we got a very stout rope fastened round his hind legs, and although he succeeded in snapping it as he had done the others, he began to think he was in danger, and made off for the jungles. He covered the four females on several occasions between the 18th December 1863 and the day on which he bolted (the 8th January, 1864). The female (Rowell Kutlee) calved on the 3rd of August 1865, which gives nineteen months as the period of gestation. I very carefully watched these Elephants (knowing them to have been covered), and for the first twelve months saw no such increase of size or alteration of shape as would indicate pregnancy ; but in the thirteenth month, 18th January 1865, Serjeant Heron reported to me that two of the Elephants had milk in their breasts, and requested that 1 would go and see them, as the Mahouts thought they must be going to calve soon. I went and saw the Mahouts draw milk from the two Elephants; and this was the first reason we had to think they were pregnant; but it seems to m e to be extraordinary and worthy of remark that the secretion of milk should have commenced so many as seven months prior to calving. The second case took place at Bellary, in India, and was under the observation of Col. Ostrichsen, when the period of gestation was noted to be the same, viz. nineteen months. Mr. H. N . Moseley, F.R.S., exhibited some specimens of sections of Corals received from Dr. G. von Koch of Darmstadt, and prepared by a method devised by him, and made the following remarks concerning them and the results attained by them :- "There has always been great difficulty in determining under the microscope the exact relation of the various components in the cases of animal structures which are composed partly of hard and partly of soft tissues. W e can easily prepare fine sectious of the hard structures alone by grinding, and we can also, in all cases where these structures are rendered hard by carbonate of lime, decalcify the tissues with acids, and, thus having removed the hard parts, prepare sections with a razor of the soft tissue alone ; but we have not hitherto been able to obtain sections in which both hard and soft structures are preserved together in situ. The want of some method which should enable such sections as these latter to be made is most strongly felt by any one who is engaged in the investigation of the anatomy of corals. Corals are so completely penetrated by an extremely hard calcareous skeleton that it has hitherto been impossible to obtain sections in which the exact relation of the soft tissues to the skeleton could be made out. Dr. von Koch, who has devoted himself for some years past to the study of coral-structures, has succeeded in devising a method which, though somewhat laborious and tedious, yields exactly what was desired. "His method was first described in 1874, in a dissertation on the anatomy of the Organ Coral (Tubipora hemprichii), published at |
