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On the Uttimate Distrisution and Fonetion of very FINE 
NERVE-FIBRES. 
We desire to call the attention of our readers to some 
important observations and conclusions by Dr. Beale, with 
reference to the ultimate distribution of nerve-fibres in various 
tissues recently arrived at from direct observation. Most 
physiologists have endeavoured to ascertain the functions of 
nerve-fibres, and the ultimate destination of certain branches, 
by experiments upon living animals; but Dr. Beale has for 
many years past devoted himself to the study of this subject 
in a very different manner. He has sought to establish many 
general propositions by direct anatomical observation, and has 
devised new methods for preparing the tissues, and for 
examining the thinnest possible sections under very high 
powers varying from 1800 to 3000 diameters. 
Perhaps one of the most important and interesting of his 
conclusions is the demonstrationof the existeuceof nerve-fibres, 
which probably bear to the vaso-motor nerves distributed to 
the coats of the small arteries the same relation that afferent or 
excitor fibres bear to efferent or motor-spinal nerves. The 
paper inwhichthis inference is arrived at is published in the last 
number of the ‘ Archives of Medicine’ (“ Of very fine Nerve- 
fibres ramifying in certain Fibrous Tissues,” &c. By Lionel 
S. Beale.) 
The author states that researches upon which he has been 
long engaged have convinced him that the ultimate nerve- 
fibres in all tissues are much finer and more abundantly dis- 
- tributed than is generally supposed, and that the active ter- 
minal branches of many nerves, where they ramify abundantly 
in tissues, have been included by many authors in the so- 
called connective tissue. The terminal branches of all nerve- 
fibres are so very fine as not to be visible by magnifying 
powers in ordinary use—many in the frog being less than the 
1-100,000th of an inch in diameter. In man and mammalia 
they are wider than this, but appear as faint granular and 
too often scarcely visible bands. In the frog, although so fine, 
they are much more distinct, and being firmer, are much 
more easily studied than in mammalia. 
All peripheral nerve-fibres are connected with nuclei (ger- 
minal matter), but these nuclei are separated by much greater 
distances in the nerves distributed to some tissues than 
others. The nuclei are for the most part oval, but in some 
cases they are triangular. These bodies, which exist in great 
