THE MICROSCOPE. 341 
your finger. That is also the reason why people whose fingers 
have been cut off often say that they have pain in the missing 
finger, and when you are seated on a hard or uncomfortable 
chair your foot goes to sleep. Now, just as the fingers are joined 
to the brain we must believe that the other organs are joined to 
it.. Thus the eye sends in its thousands of little threads to one 
part of the brain surface, the ear to another, the nose and tongue 
to another. So that each of the organs of sense is related to a 
special region of the brain. And each of these organs receives 
messages from its own particular organ and from no other.— Prof. 
M. A. Starr in The Popular Science Monthly. 
Professor C. L. Herrick remarks in The Cincinnati Lancet-Clinie 
in reference to the recent investigations upon the physiology of 
various parts of the hemispheres of the brain, that the primary 
and permanent gain of experimental work has been the demon- 
stration of the topographical distinctness of various motor and 
sensory areas in the cortex. The latest critical studies leave n 
doubt that, however difficult or impossible it may be sharply to 
outline such areas, there are distinct parts of the cortex occupied 
with special senses and special groups of muscles. 
If the occipital lobe be chiefly concerned with the function of 
sight and its intellectual concomitants, and the origin of volun- 
tary motions of extremities, what more natural than to expect 
these areas to afford quite different histological elements to the 
microscope ? 
Prof. Herrick in the midst of a series of investigations, under- 
taken in connection with Prof. W. G. Tight, of Denison Uni- 
versity, upon the anatomy of the brain of rodents and lower 
mammals generally, has been led to believe that the attentive 
study of these simpler brains affords a solution of this most im- 
portant problem of cerebral histology. 
The subject chosen was the ground-hog, Arctomys monax, while 
the brains of rabbits, opossums, and raccoons served for com- 
parison. The functions of the cortex were investigated by 
electrical stimulation and extirpation. In this way the motor 
centres for the fore and hind legs, the muscles of the face and 
neck, and the sensory areas, were accurately diagrammed. A 
method used for the first time, may be incidentally mentioned 
as worthy of more careful employment. As the electrodes were 
