Literary Notices. xvii 



record, sufficient to show that the process is essentially the same in both 

 the acute and the chronic degenerative neuroses. The chief difference 

 between the acute and the chronic cases is that in the initial stages of 

 the former the tumefaction is more pronounced than in the latter case. 

 Though the number of these degenerative neuroses is consider- 

 able, yet the lesion of the nerve fibres involved is essentially the same 

 for them all. c. j. h. 



Cortical Olfiictory Apparatus. 



Mr. G. Elliot-Smith continues his contributions to the morphology 

 of the smell centre.^ He notes the simplicity of arrangement of these 

 centres in non-placental mammals and and the similarity, already in- 

 sisted on by the reviewer, to that in Sauropsida. 



The hippocampus (cornu Ammonis, subiculum and fimbria) forms 

 in a typical early mammal the dorsal margin of the whole extent of the 

 fissura choroidea. The ventral margin of the cerebrum in the same 

 region is formed by the pyriform lobe. The prosencephalic part of the 

 olfactory bulb is continued caudad as a short peduncle, which almost 

 immediately divides into the ventro-mesal tuberculum olfactorium and 

 a lateral pyriform lobe. The tuberculum (our post-rhinal lobe) is de- 

 scribed as we have described it in the opossum and rodents. " These 

 three parts -hippocampus, pyriform and tuberculum olf. — together 

 with the precommissural area [our intraventricular lobe] and ' septum 

 lucidum ' constitute the smell centre." "All the rest of the cortex 

 may be distinguished as ' pallium.' " 



If this distinction is adhered to of course in such cases as Perameles 

 the pallium becomes greatly reduced. This prepares us for Brill's as- 

 sertion that in Sauropsida the " pallium " disappears. (Probably in 

 no other branch of science than neurology is there such a felicity of 

 whimsicality as that which leads authors to api)roiiriate a word and then 

 supply it with a modified connotation or alter its application and then 

 permits them to use a discrepancy of their own creation to discredit 

 the unfortunate coiner of the word.) 



It seems to the writer that if it could be shown that every spot on 

 the superficial aspect of the cerebrum had been encroached upon by 

 cells connected with the smell centres it would not be necessary to re- 

 ject those areas for that reason from the category of " cortex " or of 

 " pallium." 



Do we not tend to undervalue the plasticity of the brain? In the 



* Anat. Anzeiger, XI, 2. 



