398 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



off from these trunks, although they comiaenee as ho- 

 mogeneous bands, presently break up into fibres which 

 continue to the peripheral termination. In presence of 

 such a structure, Meissner could scarcely have missed 

 the suggestion it forced upon him : " In Mermis the 

 anatomical proof is easy that a conduction from the 

 periphery to the centre must take place by some other 

 means than that of a completely isolated and through- 

 out equally constructed fibre/' * On reading this sen- 

 tence, I fancied that the same idea must have occurred 

 to him as to me, and that he would follow it up by 

 some further observations, or at any rate by some 

 physiological reflections. Two years later, however, he 

 published another Memoii^,-f- wherein he notices this 

 peculiarity of the nerve-trunks as " certainly very im- 

 portant for the physiology of the nervous system ; '' 

 but instead of seizing its true significance, he proposes 

 an exjDlanation which would never have been j)roposed 

 if the facts I have observed had been known to him ; 

 for, confining himself to the peculiar structure of the 

 trunks and branches of these worms, he suggests that 

 " the trmiks must not be regarded as trunks, as ana- 

 tomical bundles of isolated fibres, but as peculiar and 

 intermediate conducting oi^gans interposed between the 

 central organ and the p)eripheral nerves. If they are 

 really to be regarded as simple nerve-trunks, in the 

 . sense in which the word is used as respects higher ani- 

 mals, we ought to find them composed of fibres — which 

 is not the case." I need scarcely criticise such a sug- 



* Loc. cit. + Loc. cit. vii. ^^. 



