Literary Notices. XXill 
necessary before permitting the conclusion that the labyrinth is not 
concerned in equilibration and the static sense. In experiment 12, 
designed to show that orientation with reference to water currents is 
not done by the lateral-line canals, the n. lateralis vagi was cut behind 
the shoulder girdle, with the result that the operated fishes still oriented 
themselves with reference to currents like normal fishes. But it should 
be noted that in this experiment the canals of the head, of far greater 
extent and importance, were uninjured. 
Professor TULLBERG’S experiments are criticised at some length by 
Dr. PARKER in connection with a brief report upon his own experi- 
ments recently published in the American Naturalist. ! 
A physiological and morphological classification of all of the cuta- 
neous sense organs of fishes as conceived by the present writer is now 
in press in the current number of the .\merican Naturalist, and the 
status of such of these organs as belong to the communis or gustatory 
system is treated more at length in another place in this issue of this 
Journal. Fe Be 
Taste Fibers and Their Independence of the Trigeminus.? 
The surgical work and clinical observations upon which this re- 
port is based seem to have been more carefully planned and more skil- 
fully wrought out for the solution of the problem of the course of the 
taste fibers than any of the preceding contributions to this difficult 
theme. In most of these cases a preliminary test of gustatory sensi- 
bility was made before the operation—a most necessary precaution, as 
the event proved. ‘The patients were whenever possible kept under 
observation and repeatedly tested tor long intervals after the operation. 
The results in all of the cases furnish a strikingly clear proof of the the- 
sis stated in the title, without the confusion and ambiguity of most pre- 
vious reports. 
In general there is a post-operative transient period of total or 
partial abolition of taste perception, with a gradual return to the nor- 
mal gustatory sensibility, but no return of tactile sensibility. He says, 
“T find it difficult to reconcile my fairly uniform results, that is, uni- 
form in so far as the ultimate preservation of taste is concerned, with 
the contradictory observations which have been made by so many 
* PARKER, G.H. The Sense of Hearing in Fishes. Am. Nat., XXXVII, 
No. 435, March, 1903. 
* CusHING, Harvey. The Taste Fibers and their Independence of the 
N, Trigeminus. Deductions from Thirteen Cases of Gasserian Ganglion Extir 
pation. Johns Hopkins Hospital Bull., X1V, No. 144, 145, 1903, pp. 71-78. 
