] JOURNAL OF CoMPARATIVE NEUROLOGY. 
supporting tissue and spreads out on the superficial surface of the spin- 
dle forming a sheath for it. In the supporting tissue, is found a retic- 
ulum formed of the axis-cylinders of the nerve fibers which, before 
entering the terminal nerve organ, have lost their sheath of HENLE and 
medullary sheath. The author studied accurately the granular sub- 
stance which constitutes the fundamental part of the organ of RUFFINI; 
in it are found nuclei which are the true terminal elements of the nerve 
organ, destined to receive the impressions from the external world and 
transmit them to the axis-cylinders. The organs of RuFFINI found in 
the subcutaneous adipose tissue are deputed for the sense of pressure. 
The PacINIAN corpuscles are few in the foot of the dog; more abun- 
dant in the cat and most numerous in the monkey and in man. The 
author has found that they are innervated by a branch of the same 
nerve which by other branches innervates the organs of RUFFINI. 
Presenting in the dog and cat the usual structure of the PacINIAN cor- 
puscle, they are more complex in the monkey and in man. For this 
reason, the author believes that they have a more highly differentiated 
function than that of the organs of Rurrini, which are found in equal 
number and of the same structure in all these animals. 
DR. DE WITT. 
The Psychology of Idiocy. 
This is not a study of particular cases or of the curiosities of idiocy, 
but an attempt to draw off, so far as this is possible, the general char- 
acteristics of the psychology of idiots and imbeciles and thus to make 
a portrait, not of this or that type, but the general type. After two 
general chapters devoted to an introduction and classification and to 
descriptive methods, the author studies successively, Perception of 
Sensations, Attention, Instincts, Feelings, Language, Intelligence, Will, 
Personality, and Responsibility. A series of twelve plates illustrates 
the writing and drawings of idiots. opie (2 
de Fleury on Neurasthenia.! 
Without attempting to go over ground of the classical works on 
neurasthenia and taking for granted their accounts of etiology, sympto- 
mology and diagnostics, Dr. DE FLEuRY has organized the data accum- 
1 Psychologie de l’idiot et de l’imbécile, par le DR. PAUL SOLIJER. Deux- 
iéme édition, revue, avec 12 planches hors texte. 1 vol. in-8° de la Bzbltothégue 
de philosophie contemporaine, 5 fr. Paris, F. Alcan, rgot. 
1 Les grands symptomes neurasthéniques, by Dr. MAURICE DE FLEURY. 
Paris, F. Alcan, 1901, price 7 fr. 50. 
