178 Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



The name " Giant Ganglion Cells " is objectionable, as it 

 not only describes nothing but their size, but is used for other 

 large nerve cells in many scattered forms of the invertebrate 

 animals as well as the vertebrates, "Median Cells" or "Dor- 

 sal Cells " would seem better, but the writer will refrain from 

 committing himself to a new term until more is discovered con- 

 cerning the apparatus. 



These cells were first described in Lophius piscatorhis by 

 Fritsch. In this fish they number about 200, are very large 

 and are massed in the anterior portion of the dorsal median fis- 

 sure. Each one gives rise to a single large neurite, according 

 to Fritsch, which dips down into the cord and becomes a con- 

 stituent fiber of one or the other of two lateral, symmetrical 

 fiber-bundles. The fibers thus forming part of these bundles 

 pass cepJialad into the brain and out of that through certain 

 roots of the loth and 5 th nerves. Fritsch considers them to 

 be sensory nerves. 



Tagliani found the same large cells in a similar position in 

 the myelon of Balistis and of Orthugorisais, in which latter 

 animal he found the fibers running both ctpJialad and caiidad. 



In my article of 1896 (Anat. Anz., Bd. XIII, p. 281) I 

 described these giant cells in a large number of Hcterosoinata, 

 or flounders, and found that the neurites entered the usual fiber- 

 bundles but ran caiidad in them instead of cephalad as Fritsch 

 described for Lophius. At the same time I gave certain reasons 

 for believing that this apparent difference in neurite-distribution 

 did not prohibit the homology of the cells in the different forms 

 (p. 291). Other and more satisfactory proof that the giant 

 cells of these fishes are homologous has been found since and 

 consists of the following facts. The giant cell apparatus of 

 Psciidopleuroncctcs Am. was further studied by means of Pala- 

 dino's Palladium Iodide method (Lee, IVth Ed., p. 413) by 

 means of which it was possible to trace the neurites with more 

 ease and certainty than before. It was then found that in many 

 of the cells the large neurite bifurcated just before entering the 

 fiber -bundle and one branch ran cephalad, while the other ran 

 caudad, both in the bundle. A Pediculate fish, nearly allied to 



