296 Cc. U. ARIENS KAPPERS 
albumen and lecithine takes place under ordinary circumstances 
(that is to say in the circumstances in which it usually occurs in 
animal bodies) generally towards the positive pole. Addition 
of potassium also enhances the anodic character of this process, 
and the substance of the axon and myelin sheath of a nerve root, 
just cut from the body, shows in a galvanic current even a very 
strong displacement toward the positive pole (Hermann). 
By acids the removal of the albuminous substance may be 
reversed, however, and directed towards the negative pole. 
There is much evidence that these galvano-tropic and kata- 
phoretic experiments are applicable to the formation of the 
nervous system by the stimuli that reach it and act in it. 
We know from the negative variation that a part of our nervous 
system which is stimulated forms a negative pole, a kathode, 
with respect to its surroundings, which in other words form an 
anodic field with regard to the center of stimulation. 
The nerve-cells which are found in the surroundings of this 
electro-negative center of stimulation, will first show an anodic 
offshoot going in the same direction as the radiation from that 
center of stimulation, on account of the anodotropic character 
of their protoplasm. This anodic extension, will derive chemical 
and tropic characteristics of the potassium and chlorides in 
which it is imbedded. ‘In consequence a larger quantity of 
potassium chloride is found in the axis-cylinder than elsewhere 
in the neurone (as Macdonald and Macallum and Menten showed 
independently of each other and in different ways). This 
large quantity of chloride of potassium (conformably to the 
above-mentioned experiments with root-tips and ameba) will 
again enhance the anodotropic, in casu stimulo-concurrent char- 
acter of the axon, and besides it increases its conductivity. 
Not until much later do the dendrites appear, and somewhat 
later still the cell body begins to move in the direction of the 
stimulated electro-negative center. 
** Why so much Cl is found in the axonic part of the neurone is unknown. 
lt seems possible to me that this is due to the anodotropic character of Cl, this 
being ananion. A greater permeability for anions might then be the cause of the 
enhanced anodotropic character of the colloid substance of the axon. There is 
much in favor of this, that it would be rather the chlorine than the potassium. 
