TONGUE AND GUSTATORY ORGANS OF MEPHITIS MEPHITIOA. 149 



The Tongue and Gustatory Organs of 

 Mephitis mephitica. 



By 



Frederick Tuckerman, H.D.Harv.. 



Amherst, Mass., U.S.A. 



With Plate XI. 



It is now twenty years since Christian Loven (26) 1 and 

 Gustav Schwalbe (37) discovered and described, independently 

 of each other, the peripheral end-organs of the nerves of taste 

 in the tongue of Mammalia. Subsequent investigators have 

 studied the distribution and minute anatomy of these organs 

 in many animals, and in all essential points they confirm the 

 results reached by Loven and Schwalbe. 



Before passing to the consideration of my own observations 

 1 will briefly review what is known regarding the position and 

 structure of the taste organs of Vertebrates. 



Bellini, nearly two hundred years ago, considered the papillae 

 of the tongue to be organs of taste. 



In 1846, Waller (50) investigated the epithelium of the 

 fungiform papilla? of the frog, and also studied the cilia and 

 ciliary movement. In 1847, he (51) concluded, from the 

 experiments of Longet, that the glosso-pharyngeus was the 

 nerve of taste for the base of the tongue and the lingual for 

 the tip and anterior third. He succeeded in tracing nerves 

 into the base of the fungiform papilla? of the frog, and into the 

 papillary elevations on the tongue of the toad. He believed 

 the fungiform or " neurovascular " papillae to be the chief 

 1 These figures refer to the bibliography at the end of the paper. 



