ON THE OCCURRENCE OF PACINIAN CORPUSCf.ES 

 IN THE PANCREAS OF THE DOMESTIC CAT. 



By 



C. D. Gillies, M.Sc, and 0. W. Tiegs. 

 Biology Departineat, University of Queensland. 



(With Text Figure 21). 



{Read before the Royal Society of Queensland, 

 30th September, 1918). 



Amongst the most interesting of the various nerve 

 endings are the Pacinian or Vater-Pacini an corpuscles, 

 which were discovered by Vater in 1741. Tyjjicallj' a 

 Pacinian corpuscle is an ovoid body situated at the extremit}' 

 of a medullated nerve fibre, the axon of which j^asses up the 

 major axis of the structure and terminates within ttie latter 

 as an arborescence. At the base of the corpuscle the 

 perineurium o r sheath of Henle of the nerve fibre is continuous 

 with a considerable number of concentric tunics or coats 

 of connective tissue {t, fig. 21), which aie lined internally 

 by endothelial cells {n, fig. 21) — in transverse and longi- 

 tudinal sections the cells of the latter are j)rominent struc- 

 tures. The endoneurium, neurilemma ol" sheath of Schwann 

 and the medullary sheath pass into the corpuscle for some 

 distance with the axon, retaining their characteristic 

 features, but eventually the endoneurium becomes modified 

 to form a core (c, fig. 21) surrounding the axon, while the 

 neurilemma and the medullary sheath are lost. Rauber* 

 described an interesting variation in which three corpuscles 



*Zool. Anz., iii, 1880, p. GSS. 



