490 S. WALTER RANSON 
and Huber of the problem as it stood at the time of the writing 
of their article, three views were then held: (1) According 
to one view, the axons did not degenerate in the peripheral 
stump after they had been separated from the central nervous 
system, so that, after the two ends of a cut nerve had been 
approximated, it was only necessary for a peripheral axon to 
fuse with a central axon and for a new myelin sheath to be.devel- 
oped about it. (2) The view most generally current at that 
time was the view of Waller that the new axons grew out from 
the central end. (3) But they state that the best of the papers 
which had appeared in the years immediately preceding their 
work agreed in stating that the axis cylinder is developed anew 
in the peripheral end and is connected secondarily to the cen- 
tral end. They add that those who maintained that the new 
axis cylinders are sprouted from the old ones of the central end 
did not claim to have seen the process, since the closest study 
with the staining method then in use showed nothing of the 
axis cylinder at the point of transition. In the opinion of the 
present writer, it was just this lack of a satisfactory axon stain 
and the resulting uncertainty of what was occurring at the 
transition zone between the ends of a cut nerve that has made 
it possible for the supporters of the theory of the autogenous 
regeneration of nerves to maintain their position for so many 
years. 
With the work of Biingner (91), Howell and Huber (’92), 
Stroebe (93) and Huber (’95), the modern work on the regen- 
eration of nerves may be said to have begun. Biingner (91) 
saw and clearly described the formation of the nucleated pro- 
toplasmic bands which have occupied so prominent a place in 
the supposed histogenesis of autogenously regenerated nerve 
fibers. According to him, the nuclei of the neurilemma, increase 
in number and protoplasm accumulates about them. Longi- 
tudinal striation appears in the protoplasm of these cells which 
then become fused into long multinucleated bands. Within 
these bands the centrally placed, longitudinally striated pro- 
toplasm becomes differentiated into a new axon, while in the 
surrounding protoplasm the myelin sheath is laid down. 
