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The nerves of one of the more highly specialized Acanthopteri, 
Menidia notata (MIıTcHILL), have been plotted by reconstruction 
from serial sections. Although the cranial nerves have been compacted 
and fused to an extraordinary degree, yet all of the nerve components 
described by Strong [8] in the Amphibia can be recognized here. 
Their relations have been complicated, as compared with the Am- 
phibia, by the excessive hypertrophy of some factors and their fusion 
and intricate anastomosis peripherally ; yet when we find here the 
same fundamental plan as in the Amphibia the harmony is made the 
more impressive by virtue of the diversity itself. 
Strona distinguishes three kinds of sensory fibers: (a) the 
general cutaneous system, innervating the skin without spe- 
cialized end organs, and terminating in the spinal V, or ascending 
trigeminal tract of the medulla; (b) the acustico-lateral system, 
innervating the lateral line organs and the ear and terminating in the 
“tuberculum acusticum”; (c) the fasciculus communis system, 
innervating taste buds and other similar specialized sense organs (not 
belonging to the lateral line system) and the visceral surfaces in 
general. The latter is probably a distinct component, though we have 
as yet no satisfactory anatomical evidence for it. 
All of these components are described and figured in the medulla 
of a number of Teleosts and Ganoids by Kinassury [5] in a forth- 
coming paper. Now, in Menidia I not only find the components in 
the medulla as Kinaspury figures them, but I have verified them by 
tracing each through its ganglion to its peripheral distribution. In 
the vagus we find, besides coarse fibered motor elements, the fine 
fibered third component (fasciculus communis) enormously developed. 
Arising from the lobus vagi, it makes up all but an insignificant 
portion of the great vagus ganglion. This ganglion is obviously four- 
lobed, one lobe |for each branchial ramus, the last one being larger 
and including also the ganglion of the r. visceralis. In its dorsal 
part is a small group of cells belonging to the first, or general 
cutaneous, component. In my sections I am not able to trace their 
fibers with certainty into the spinal V of the medulla; but, as Kınas- 
puRY in Perca, Roccus and Amiurus finds spinal V fibers 
entering the vagus and as I find that the fibers from this little gan- 
glion distribute to the skin of the dorsal part of the operculum, there 
can be little doubt that we have here a true ramus cutaneus dor- 
salis = r. auricularis vagi (STRONG). 
The coarse fibered nerve of the lateral line arises farther 
cephalad than any of the vagus roots, in connection with VIII. It and 
