990 
different nature, viz. that at the supposed end of the muscle fibres, 
where the fibres are attached to the tendon, the myofibrillae are 
directly continued into the tendon-fibres and the sarcolemma is not 
closed at the extremity of the muscle fibres, but perforated by the 
myoftibrillae, these being directly continuous with the fibrillae of the 
tendon. According to these statements we should find in the striated 
muscles the curious disposition, that protoplasmatic, strongly diffe- 
rentiated, intracellular fibrillae, the myofibrillae, would be directly 
continuous with collagenous connective tissue-fibrillae, which are formed 
eatracellularly by special connective-tissue cells, the fibroblasts. 
It is easily understood, that such an opinion would not remain 
uncontradicted, and thus the publication of the paper by ScHULTZE 
mentioned above has called into life already a pretty large number 
of papers on the same subject; and indeed, one should think twice 
before joining in a strife about such a difficult problem, and which 
is not always conducted with the impartiality and courtesy held so 
high in scientific discussions. And the writer of the present paper 
surely would not have entered the arena, if it were not, that 
his observations, which are recorded in the present paper, according 
to his opinion, are apt to show, that in both statements there is an 
element of truth, as far as the observations go, made by ScHULTZE 
and his opponents in their preparations of adult muscle fibres — 
though the line must be drawn here, and in reality the truth seems 
to lie not in the middle, but on the side of the opponents of ScHuULTzE, 
the interpretation of his observations being wrong. 
Undoubtedly longitudinal sections of adult musclefibres often seem 
to show a mode of attachment to the tendon-fibres corresponding 
exactly with the drawings and statements made by ScnuLrtze and 
his followers, and when studying a great number of well-preserved 
and well-stained sections of muscle- and tendonfibres, as I did in the 
course of the last ten years’), one is often tempted to doubt the 
truth of the theory of the discontinuity of the muscle- and tendon- 
fibres and the closed appearance of the sarcolemma ai the extremity 
of the muscle-fibres. 
Again and again one tries to find the boundary line of the sarco- 
lemma without getting definite results, and surely the paper by 
SCHULTZE would have been hailed as containing the long sought- 
for solution of this histological problem, were it not that the study 
1) Even as long ago as 1901 I made a series of sections through the musculature 
of small salmonidae, which seemed to show with exquisite clearness the direct 
continuity of muscle- and tendon-fibrillae. 
