68 A. B. MACALLUM. 
basal layers of the epithelium undergo vital processes much 
greater than those of the superficial layer or than those of 
the epithelium of the adult. Again, the figures of Eberth are 
most highly developed when the epithelium is constituted 
of from three to five layers of cells, and they almost 
wholly disappear when the vital energies of the cells 
containing them are spent, as, for example, at the com- 
mencement of resorption of the tail. Do these facts point 
to the supposition that the figures of Eberth protect the intra- 
cellular nerve-fibrils from the vital processes, assimilatory or 
otherwise, of the vigorous cell ? 
Nussbaum! found in the cells of the pancreas of Sala- 
mandra maculosa structures which have been termed by 
him “ Nebenkerne,” and which are apparently similar in many 
respects to figures of Eberth. They are rarely visible when 
the cell has undergone a somewhat prolonged period of rest, 
and they attain their most marked development four or five 
days after the animal has taken food. They have often many 
of the curious shapes assumed by the figures of Eberth, and 
one or more may be found in a cell, situated between the 
nucleus and the membrana propria. 
It is quite probable that these also are sheaths for intra- 
cellular nerve terminations. 
VI.—Summary. 
The results of this work may be summarised in the following 
statements : 
1. Certain fibres of the nerve network, situated below the 
corium, and known as the fundamental plexus, give origin to 
fibrils which enter the epithelium and terminate in compara- 
tively large beadlike bodies between the cells. 
2. From a network of fine anastomising nerve-fibrils situated 
immediately below the epithelium, and forming meshes, each 
narrower than the surface covered by an epithelial cell, arise 
other excessively fine fibrils, which end either within or between 
the cells, or, after branching, in both fashions. 
1 * Arch, fiir Mikr, Anat.,’ Bd. xxi, p. 337. 
