452 A VERS. [Vol. VIII. 



structure itself. What appears to be of such a nature in Golgi 

 preparations is in reality due to the presence on the fibre 

 of cellular structure, which in most cases is a sheath nucleus, 

 resp. sheath cell. 



The details and illustrations I contemplate publishing in the 

 near future. 



C. The so-called " Spiral Nerves." 



The system of spiral nerve fibres in the organ of Corti (only), 

 which was discovered by F. E. Schulze, very fully described 

 by Deiters in i860, and which since that time has been vari- 

 ously identified and described by many others, is clearly 

 defined by the Golgi method, and its claims to an independent 

 position not sustained. This "system " of spiral nerves proves 

 to be nothing more than portions of the radial nerve system 

 drav/n out of the radial course into oblique or short spiral 

 courses, and is not, as previous writers have left us to infer, 

 confined to the organ of Corti alone, but occurs frequently 

 between the modiolus and the end organ. The most clearly 

 defined bundle of such spiral fibres occurs in the cochlear 

 ganglion (PI. I, Figs. 4 and 7; PI. II, Figs. 8-10, 11 and 12; 

 PI. Ill, Figs. 18, 19, 22, 27 and 29). ^ 



In the case of all spiral fibres, where the fibre could be 

 traced, the emergence of the fibre from the ganglion as a 

 genuine radial prolongation of a ganglion cell, was found to 

 obtain without exception. The reason why the spiral fibres 

 exist is because during the growth of the fibres from the hair- 

 cells toward their central connections, they grow away from 

 the cells along the paths of least resistance, with, however, a 

 constant tendency to enter the central nervous system. There 

 are, apparently, only two ways in which a nerve fibre may be 

 laid down between the cell of origin and the brain — [a) each 

 cell may send its process, as a distinctly individual outgrowth, 

 to the brain, or {b) all cells of later generations — derivative 

 cells — may acquire more or less of their central process by 

 a splitting of the fibre already belonging to the parent cell. 

 This latter method is probably the one which takes place most 



1 Ilenle has figured one of these bundles as a part of the cochlear ganglion. 



