Herrick, Werves of Stluroid Fishes. 237 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS. 
This study was undertaken primarily to discover the dis- 
tribution, structure and innervation of the cutaneous sense _ or- 
gans of the common American cat fish preliminary to an 
embryological research upon these organs, the corresponding 
nerve components and their cerebral centers. In the course ‘of 
this work the components of the cranial nerves have been 
worked out in detail and plotted, and thus our knowledge of 
the exact composition of the nerves of the head is extended to 
another vertebrate type. The chief points of morphological 
importance which this study has yielded are as follows: 
1. The composition of the cranial nerves of Ameiurus is 
substantially the same as that of the other teleostean fishes 
whose nerves have been thoroughly worked out. The 
trigemino-facial ganglionic complex is much more compact and 
intricate than in teleosts in general, but it presents no funda- 
mental differences in plan. The other cranial nerves are also 
of the typical teleostean type, save the eye-muscle nerves, 
whose arrangements conform to the ganoidean pattern so far as 
this latter is at present known (Allis, ’97, Workman, ’00). The 
central termini of these components are strictly typical as com- 
pared with other vertebrates, save that the enlargement of the 
communis component of the facialis has resulted in the 
development of a special terminal nucleus of large size for these 
fibers at the cephalic end of the fasciculus communis, the lobus 
facialis. Peripherally the components have the typical distribu- 
tion. Thus, of the motor components, the somatic motor in- 
nervates only somatic muscles and the viscero-motor only those 
commonly relgated to the visceral musculature; the general 
cutaneous system supplies the skin only, never specialized sense 
organs; all taste buds and terminal buds, wherever distributed 
over the body, are supplied from the communis. system; and the 
acustico-lateralis system innervates only specialized sense organs, 
or neuromasts, of a definite type of structure which is different 
from that of the terminal buds. All of these sense organs are 
very highly developed, and this case furnishes an absolute 
