Abstract. Netrins are secreted molecules capable of attracting or repelling growing axons. They and their receptors, along with other netrin-interacting proteins, are widely conserved among animals from a broad range of phyla. We have raised and purified an antibody against a recently cloned leech netrin, which has allowed us to characterize embryonic netrin expression by cells in peripheral tissues and in the central nervous system. During early gangliogenesis, netrin expression was detected at particularly high levels in five bilateral pairs of central neurons. Towards the end of the period of axonal outgrowth, netrin expression was observed to be restricted to only six central neurons, comprising two bilateral pairs and two unpaired cells. A pair of netrin-producing central neurons, the bipolar cells, was identified by their expression of the antigen recognized by the monoclonal antibody Laz1-1. Double staining of sensory afferents from segmental sensilla with the monoclonal antibody Lan3-2 and the bipolar cells with the netrin antibody revealed that the terminals of these afferents grow up to the bipolar cells and turn anteriorly or posteriorly, without extending any further medially. Peripheral netrin expression was found to be restricted to longitudinal muscle cells in the ventral half of the body wall. Extracellular, secreted netrin was detected in a broad longitudinal stripe located symmetrically with respect to the ventral midline. The pattern of expression of netrin in leech embryos is consistent with observed expression patterns in other animals, suggesting that developmental netrin functions are conserved among all bilateral animals.

This article traces the lineage of the popular performance set-piece of the ‘oracular altar scene’ from its inception in Jonson’s Sejanus through its frequent reuse by the King’s Men and their imitators later in the century. By doing so, it demonstrates how material practices of reuse in the seventeenth-century theatre helped shape the production of popular knowledge about the nature of ‘pagan’ ritual and its practitioners in the Stuart era of intensified antiquarian discovery and colonial expansion.

This essay re‐examines George Herbert's poetic and pastoral career in the rural parish of Bemerton, Wiltshire in light of the county's social history during his arrival in 1630, shedding new light on a location that scholars have often characterized as peaceful and isolated. It shows that Wiltshire experienced significant economic distress and subsequent riots during the dearth years of 1629–1631, and documents local and national innovations in charitable giving that were designed in response to the crisis. The essay argues that Herbert's observations about charity in both his pastoral manual A Priest to the Temple and in his famous lyric “The Collar,” though often considered as abstract theological meditations, can also be read as localized responses to the secularization of charity and the attendant attrition of ministerial prerogatives.

pull The Church Militant back in line with the politics and aesthetics of the Latin mini-epic tradition from which Herbert had deliberately broken. With this translation, Leeke -who was himself situated within a network of Arminian ministers -produced a more emphatically nationalist and less ecclesiastically controversial version of Herbert's poem, softening its critiques of the English church and of ceremonial practices while amplifying its anti-Catholic content, perhaps with an eye to producing a more "acceptable" Herbert for international circulation. Demonstrating The Church Militant's proximity to this Neo-Latin genre raises pressing, perhaps unexpected questions about Herbert's choice to compose the poem in English rather than in Latin. Our analysis shows him stepping away from a poetic and political tradition that saw Anglo-Latin verse as a medium through which public defenses of the English church could circulate, both within England and abroad. Engaged as it was in a different political project -one far more critical of the English church -Herbert's poem, we suggest, walked a narrow path, retaining and revising markers of the Neo-Latin brief epic while avoiding the political connotations the Latin language had for his generic predecessors.