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immediate connection of the network with the free endings as well 

 as with corpuscles. All these authors, though theoretically far removed 

 from RuFFiNi's neurogenetic conceptions, have brought forward a 

 number of facts corresponding satisfactorily with those insisted upon 

 most emphatically by the Italian school. 



In short there is in the literature about the subject a tendency 

 towards the hypothesis that there is, generally speaking, intercon- 

 nection and coherence in the whole peripheral sensory nervous system. 



It is these facts, derived from the literature, that enhance the 

 significance of recent personal studies made by the Bielschowsky method 

 on the sensory nerve-endings. 



The Bielschowsky method diiters from the methylene blue- and 

 the gold-chloride method in that it atFords another view of the 

 problems. It does not present those typical appearances, which, when 

 comparative!}^ slight magnifications of rather thick sections are 

 examined, yield a clear survey of the relations. Its efficiency lies in 

 the fact that when preparations counterstained in haem. eosin, are 

 examined under a microscope of the highest power, it brings out in 

 strong relief the relations between the fibrils and their surroundings. 



Along this totally different path I arrived at conclusions which, 

 as I hope, will contribute to lend support to the hypothesis that 

 the Meissner corptiscles are more i-elated to the free endings than 

 is commonly believed. 



In a paper read at last year's Congress for Physics und Medicine 

 at The Hague (1917) (see also: Verslagen Kon. Ak. v. Wetensch. 

 27 April 1917) I recorded some morphological data, hitherto unknown, 

 concerning the structure of the axis-cylinder. In that paper I set 

 forth that, when tracing an ordinary nerve-fiber from centre to 

 periphery, the following changes in the structure are to be observed 

 in a transverse section. First we find in the medullary sheath the 

 axoplasm, which (in a transverse section) seems to be vacuolar in 

 structure and embraces the neurofibrils in the protoplasmatic septa 

 between the vacuoles. As known, the medullary sheath is surrounded 

 by the protoplasmatic sheath of Schwann with its nucleus. More 

 towards the periphery the medullary sheath splits up into several 

 tubes. The always vacuolar axoplasma material with its fibrils spreads 

 over the daughter medullary sheaths. Together they remain embedded 

 in one undivided protoplasmatic mass, which must be considered as 

 a continuation of the sheath of Schwann. Still further towards the 

 terminus of the course of the nerve the medullary sheaths disappear 

 from the section, so that the neurofibrils lie free in the proto- 

 plasmatic envelopment which, now being of vacuolar structure like 



