146 KIYOYASU MARUI 



tion of the Golgi net by Held, I have found a thickening of the 

 nodal points of the Golgi net, although I would not deny the 

 fact that the nodal points sometimes, especially in my Levaditi's 

 preparations of Ameiurus, were not particularly thickened, 

 when the impregnation of the nervous elements was not suf- 

 ficient. According to my opinion, however, this mark of dis- 

 tinction is not of considerable value and the variation must be 

 regarded as the consequence of variable impregnation and 

 methods of demonstration. It would be necessary to add here 

 that in my Heidenhain preparations the nodal points appeared 

 always thickened. On ground of these considerations, all the 

 figures of Held seem to be pictures of the Golgi net, which is 

 connected with nerve fibers and possesses the thickening on its 

 nodal points; the latter might well be regarded as the cross- 

 section of the nerve fiber or the so-called terminal foot of Held, 

 which I will describe and discuss in the following chapter. The 

 figures of Held's publication ('02; 3, 4) might come under the 

 same point of view. Anybody who would compare those figures 

 of Held with mine (figs. 6 and 11) would note immediately that 

 they demonstrate thoroughly* similar situations. I therefore 

 came to the conclusion that on the surface of the Mauthner cell 

 there exists a single net-work — the Golgi net — and that the 

 endings of nerve fibers do not lie in the mesh of the latter, as it 

 was supposed by Held, but the nervous elements of the synapse 

 are related to the Golgi net and reach the cell surface at the 

 same points where the Golgi net beams are attached to the cell 

 surface. Held seemed to have been misled in his hypothesis on 

 account of his one-sided interpretation of Golgi and neurosome 

 preparations and his belief in the glious nature of the Golgi net. 

 As far as the nature of the Golgi net is concerned, the inter- 

 pretation of Golgi,'* Cajal (12), and Heidenhain (16), and Wolff 

 (27), who wanted to see in it a neurokeratin structure, an arti- 

 fact by coagulation, or then the superficial part of the honey- 

 comb structure of the nerve cell, must immediately be denied. 



* Cited in Plasma u. Zelle, Heidenhain, Bd. 1, a, p. 911. 



