SummaryTwenty patients (M 11, F 9; ranging from 1-77 years old) with histologically proven glial tumours in the thalamic region, treated from 1979 until 1994 at Kyushu University Hospital were retrospectively reviewed and analysed in order to elucidate their clinical and neuropathological characteristics. The initial common clinical manifestations were those of increased intracranial pressure or motor weakness. The histological diagnosis of the turnout was piIocytic astrocytoma in 2 patients, fibrillary astrocytoma in 7, anaplastic astrocytoma in 7, and glioblastoma multiforme in 4. The initial treatment was surgery alone in 4 patients, surgery followed by radiation therapy in 5, surgery followed by radiation therapy and chemotherapy in 9, and conventional radiation therapy alone in 2 patients. The 3-year overall actuarial survival rate for all patients was 20% but was related to both the histological type and the age of the patients: As a result, the rate was 44% for patients with lowgrade astrocytoma compared to 0% for those with high-grade astrocytoma. While 5 out of 11 patients under the age of 25 years at their initial presentation have survived for from 2-16 years after the diagnosis, all patients presenting after the age of 25 years died within 3 years after treatment. Thalamic glial tumours are not a homogeneous group of tumours in terms of clinical behaviour and histopathological features, and the poor overall results, especially in adult tumours, thus emphasise the need for continued research in the treatment of these tumours.

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Premature maturation was brought about in cultivated male Japanese eels by the injection of synahorin and the spermatogenesis of the fish was then studied cytolo- gically.The results obtained were as follows:1. The eels which were reared in sea water only showed on changes in testicular maturity in the early and late multiplication stages. Fish treated with synahorin , when transferred to sea water, exhibited a marked change in maturity and those injected with 200 or 300 ru synahorin showed marked secondary sex characters. Their testes, which arrived at the spermatocyte stage, after being treated four times with synahorin (each time with 100 ru), showed the appearance of spermatozoa in the lobule lumen, and after the sixth treatment with the hormone, the extrusion of sperm occurred in the fish. The spermatozoa obtained showed high motility in sea water.2. The morphology of the germ cell during spermatogenesis has been described and it resembles that of Anguilla vulgaris already reported.Based on their histological characteristics, the testicular maturity of the eel has been divided into the following five stages. 1) early multiplication stage, 2) late multiplication stage, 3) spermatocyte stage, 4) sperm formation stage, 5) ripe stage.

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