LITERAKY NOTICES. 



His, W. Entwickelung des menschlichen Gehirns wjihrend der ersten Monale. 

 Leipzig, S. Hirzel, 1 904. Price M. 12. 



Neurologists are to be congratulated that lietbre his death Pro- 

 fessor His was able to bring the present work to completion — a beau- 

 tifully illustrated volume of 176 pages. After the appearance of his 

 paper on the development of the medulla oblongata the publication of 

 this series of researches was interrupted, as the author tells us in the 

 preface of the present work, during the period of active reconstruction 

 of morphological conception.s represented by the labors of Flechsig, 

 GoLGi, Ram('»x V Caj.al, etc. In the meantime Professor His had 

 been continuing his investigations and now at the close of the research 

 period just referred to presents an installment which covers the histo- 

 genesis and morphogenesis of the entire central nervous system in its 

 earlier stages, including a revised summary of much that is contained 

 in the earlier papers. 



In the review of the histogensis of the nerve tube, the term syn- 

 cytium is applied for the first time, I believe (p. 13), to the spongio- 

 blastic framework as it appears in the earliest form of the '' Randschlier'' 

 — a conception which has been abundantly confirmed and enlarged by 

 Hardestv in his latest contribution. He abandons his former view 

 that mesodermal elements enter with the blood vessels and share in the 

 formation of neuroglia, while Hardestv, in the work just cited, admits 

 a still more extensive participation of mesoderm in the neuroglia by 

 means of a fusion of the spongioblastic syncytium with the enveloping 

 connective tissue syncytium. 



The germinative cells are again described as a distinct category, 

 though from the brief reference it appears that, as contended by re- 

 cent critics, they are probably nothing other than undifferentiated cells 

 in a state of mitosis. For the recognition of neuroblasts there is no 

 criterion save their connection with a nervous process (p. 21). 



The section devoted to the longitudinal zones of the central nerv- 

 ous system is disappointingly brief. Recognizing the inadequacy of 

 the original terms ba.'^al plate {Gnindplatte) and alar \)\a.ie {FlUgelplatte) , 



