THE NERVE-NET 117 



neuroblasts, from which adult neurones were differen- 

 tiated were in the beginning far separated from each 

 other and only secondarily came together. Of their ini- 

 tial separation there could not be the least doubt; the 

 question that arose concerned the extent of their final 

 union. On both anatomical and physiological grounds 

 there were good reasons advanced to show that, though 

 the separate neurones came into such contact relations 

 as was necessary for the transmission of nervous im- 

 pulses, they never fused to such an extent as to lose their 

 identities. The fibrillar material, in which these inter- 

 relations were known to occur, was, therefore, regarded, 

 not as a continuous net, as Gerlach believed it to be, but 

 as broken up into discrete neuronic systems separated 

 one from another by an infinitude of minute interruptions, 

 which, however, were capable of physiological continuity 

 through what is known as a synapse. Thus each neurone, 

 or true nerve cell, was believed to possess a certain amount 

 of independence from its neighbors, though physiologi- 

 cally united to them at least by transmitting contact. 



As the idea of the synaptic nervous system gradually 

 unfolded itself to the more orthodox neurologists, there 

 arose from another school of workers a very different con- 

 ception of the interrelation of nervous elements. The 

 impetus to this new movement came chiefly from the work 

 of Apathy, who in 1897 maintained on the basis of histo- 

 logical preparations of almost incredible clearness that 

 the nervous elements of many animals were bound to- 

 gether by a network of neurofibrils in which there was 

 not the least evidence of interruption such as is implied 

 in the synapse. This view was in a way a revival of the 

 idea of a continuous network as maintained in a previous 

 generation by Gerlach. The careful reader of Apathy's 



