38 Journal of Comparative Neuroi.ogv. 



be entirely homologous with the segments of the nerve and its 

 peripheral portion is perhaps simply a modified dendrite. 



The endings above described must not be confused with 

 the sense buds found elsewhere in the skin. In the latter there 

 is a well-developed accessory apparatus in the form of the well- 

 known beaker or "Stutz" cells, here there is simply a cavity or 

 tube in the midst of unmodified epithelium cells. Yet it is not 

 to be assumed without better evidence than is now at command 

 that these two classes are of entirely distinct nature and origin. 

 In the first place it is scarcely to be credited that two sets of 

 sensory organs derived from the same proton and so similar in 

 function as are the organs of smell and taste should be of an ab- 

 solutely different type, and what may be said of the taste buds 

 applies mutatis mutandis to the sensory buds of the skin. 



The contrast between the results of different methods is no- 

 where better illustrated than in the different conclusions reached 

 by Fusari and Panasci on the one hand (Arch, italiennes de 

 Biol. XIV, p. 240) and those of Arnstein (Archiv f. mikro- 

 skop. Anat. XXXXI, 2). The former authors worked with 

 the chrome-silver method and describe a direct communication 

 of the nerve fiber with the axial (rod) cells of the taste buds. 

 (This we are able to substantiate from personal observation.) 

 Arnstein, on the other hand, denies such connection most em- 

 phatically and claims that teased preparations with methylene 

 blue show with all possible clearness that there is no such con- 

 nection, but instead that the varicose nerve fibers form a felt- 

 ing of fibers around the axial and outer cells of the bud and end 

 free in the pore. Arnstein finds quite similar nerve endings in 

 the filiform papillae. He does not find forked cells, but inclines 

 to the view that such cells result from the separation of the true 

 nerve fiber from the peripheral end of the cell to which it is at- 

 tached. The appearance of continuity between the cell and the 

 nerve fiber is said to be illusory and is explained as due to the 

 blackening of the cell as well as the fiber. Ehrlich (Deutsch. 

 med. Wochenschrift, 1886, 4) described intensely colored cells 

 in the mucous membrane of the olfactory region which pass 

 without interruption into a nerve fiber, but these cases Arnstein 

 also dismisses as illusory. Dr. Niemack has also reached sim- 

 ilar conclusions by the use of different material (Anat. Heften, 

 Merkel und Bonnet, Anat. Anzeiger, VIII, p. 20.) 



