FINER STRUCTURE OF SYNAPSE 155 



tions referred to. As remarked, my findings in the Cajal and 

 Bielschowsky preparations are in opposition to those of Held 

 (19, 20), Cajal (13), Holmgren (22), Wolff (27), and others, in so 

 far as I demonstrated in the terminal feet merely the splitting 

 of the nerve fiber into fine fibrils instead of a net structure. Now 

 it is remarkable that some of the above-mentioned authors (Ca- 

 jal, Held, and others) assume also a net structure of the intra- 

 cellular neurofibril, while others (Wolff, 27) deny the net struc- 

 ture in the cell body, at least in many kinds of nerve cells. I 

 could not find any real net structure in either the Mauthner cell 

 or in the terminal feet. It appears extremely interesting to me 

 that in Wolff's (27) figures Biitschli's honeycomb structure was 

 stained in the cell body as well as in the dendrites. Economo 

 (15) supposed that the net figure of the terminal feet might de- 

 pend upon the simultaneous impregnation of the Biitschli struc- 

 ture. Also Auerbach (2), who was at first a partisan of the 

 contact theory, declared that the neurofibrils do not form a reti- 

 culum in the terminal feet, but that one, two, or three delicate 

 fibrils go radially into the cell body, embedded in the ground 

 substance of the terminal feet. 



Ramon y Cajal (12, 13), Dogiel (14), Retzius (27), Heiden- 

 hain (16), and others despite the repeated argumentation of the 

 antagonists Held (19, 10), Holmgren (22), Bielschowsky (9), An- 

 toni (17), Auerbach (3), and others) remained firm on the stand- 

 point of the contact theory. According to Held, Bielschowsky, 

 and others, however, the theory of the contact must result from 

 the imperfect impregnation of the structure in question; they 

 observed, as remarked, that the fibrils of the terminal feet go 

 into the cell body and enter into relation with the cell fibrils. I 

 could also confirm the neurofibril continuity in Mauthner' s cell 

 in the Bielschowsky preparations. The 'bontones de Auerbach' 

 of Cajal evidently must not be regarded as the contact organs, 

 in which the nerve fibers come to their ends, but are rather to be 

 interpreted as the stations in the course of nerve fibers, where 

 the modification of the substance takes place, which was claimed 

 by Bielschowsky (8). With the supposition of the latter, how- 



