450 A. B. MACALLUM. 



I have never seen the connection of these fibres with medul- 

 lated nerves, having never found the latter in the liver^ but the 

 normal or abnormal occurrence of which in the interlobular 

 canals I do not doubt. Medullated nerve-fibres are sometimes 

 found in unusual places. For example, Cybulsky found a 

 medullated nerve-fibre penetrating the cutaneous epithelium, 

 and I also have seen the same thing in a preparation of epithe- 

 lioma. One may be inclined to believe, therefore, that medul- 

 lated nerve-fibres can and do occur in the liver. It is to be 

 remembered too that gold chloride is not a good reagent for 

 demonstrating the myeline investment of nerves, the occur- 

 rence of which may escape the eye in preparations obtained 

 with the one method. 



It is quite true, as KupflFer asserts, that in gold preparations 

 violet-coloured tissue passes at places in from the serous 

 covering of the liver between the hepatic cylinders. I gather 

 from his statements that he supposes that no nerves can reach 

 the hepatic tissue in this way. Such a supposition is ground- 

 less, seeing that the serosa and the interlobular tissue are of 

 one and the same origin, and one is as likely as the other to 

 contain nerve-fibres. Where in my preparations the serosa 

 was coloured violet throughout I added a drop of the solu- 

 tion of potassic cyanide, and found in consequence the same 

 to be true here which I have described for the interlobular 

 canals, namely, the presence of the two types of tissue — 

 nerve and connective, the latter, however, very largely pre- 

 dominating. 



There are at times interspersed between the bundles of large, 

 violet-coloured fibres, fibrils in which the violet colour is not 

 so distinct, and is more readily removable with potassic cyanide 

 than that of the large fibres, but less so than that of connective 

 tissue. I am doubtful of the significance of these, but they 

 apparently answer to the smaller nerve-fibres of Nesterowsky. 

 I have had no means of determining their connection with the 

 larger fibres. 



Around the central vein of a lobule both the connective and 

 the nerve-tissue are in small quantity. The nerve-tissue is 



