Author's abstract of this paper issued by 

 the bibliographic service, december 9 



THE OPHTHALMIC NERVES OF THE GNATHOSTOME 



FISHES 



EDWARD PHELPS ALLIS, JR. 



Menton, France 



There has long been, and still is, confusion in the terms em- 

 ployed to designate the ophthalmic nerves of the gnathostome 

 fishes. These nerves were formerly considered to be the equiva- 

 lents of the ramus ophthalmicus trigemini of higher vertebrates 

 (Stannius, '49), and as in many fishes, one of them lies super- 

 ficial to the other they were called the rami superficialis and 

 profundus trigemini. The term profundus was, however, fre- 

 quently given to two distinctly different nerves, one of which 

 runs forward between the superior and inferior divisions of the 

 nervus oculomotorius and then ventral to the nervus trochlearis, 

 while the other runs forward dorsal to both those nerves. The 

 former nerve is alone properly called a profundus and it is typ- 

 ically found in the Elasmobranchii. A nerve that, in certain 

 fishes, connects the basal portion of this profundus nerve with 

 that of the superficialis was called the portio ophthalmici profundi. 



Later, it was' found that those nerve fibers of the superficialis 

 nerve that innervate the organs of the supraorbital laterosensory 

 line all issue from the medulla as an apparent part of the root 

 of the nervus facialis, and as this was considered to be incontro- 

 vertible evidence that they belonged to the latter nerve, that part 

 of the ophthalmicus superficialis that was formed by them was 

 called the ramus ophthalmicus superficialis facialis. The re- 

 maining fibers of the superficialis nerve were still considered to 

 belong to the trigeminus, and were usually called the ramus oph- 

 thalmicus superficialis trigemini, but as, in the Holostei and 

 Teleostei, they lie deeper than the lateralis fibers, they were fre- 

 quently called the ra.mus ophthalmicus profundus trigemini, and 



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