154 Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



and conjunctiva assumed a distinctly blue color. Some 30 min- 

 utes after the injection the eye-muscles were exposed by remov- 

 ing the bony wall of the orbit, and by dissecting away the fas- 

 cia and adipose tissue covering the eye-muscles. As soon as 

 the muscles and tendons were exposed they were removed and 

 transferred to a slide moistened in normal salt, care being taken 

 to cut the tendons as near their ocular insertion as possible and 

 to place them on the slide with the ocular side downwards. The 

 muscle remained on the slide until, on examination with the mi- 

 croscope, the nerve-endings seemed well stained. The tissue 

 was then fixed, either in an ammonium picrate solution and 

 mounted in ammonium picrate glycerine, or in ammonium mo- 

 lybdate (Bethe). Tissues fixed by the latter method were em- 

 bedded, sectioned and counter-stained in alum carmine and 

 mounted in balsam. 



In preparations prepared by the former method it is possi- 

 ble to mount an entire eye-muscle — fleshy mass and tendon — 

 and yet have a preparation thin enough to study with high 

 powers. I found such preparations most useful for ascertaining 

 the general distribution of the nerves in the muscular and ten- 

 dinous portion, their branching and their relation to the nerve- 

 ending to be described ; also the arrangement of the terminal 

 branches of the nerves in the end-organs. Some of the details 

 of the structure of the end-organs and the relation of the ter- 

 minal nerve branches to the tissue elements were best studied 

 in sections made as above indicated. 



In preparations made after the former of the above men- 

 tioned methods, two varieties of nerve fibers (recognized by 

 their terminations) and endings may be readily made out. Mo- 

 tor fibers, the endings of which are found in the middle of the 

 fleshy mass, and rather small medullated nerve fibers, which 

 run forward between or over the muscle fibers to the tendinous 

 portion of the muscles, there to end in special end-organs. 

 Similar observations have been made by Sherrington (5), as 

 may be seen from the following statement taken from one of 

 his papers : "I was struck with the long distance to which 

 many of the nerve fibers in these muscles travel forward 



