308 PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
June 5th, 18638. 
Furtuer Oxsurvations in favour of the view that Nervn- 
FIBRES never end in Votuntary Muscrie. By Lionen 
S. Beatz, M.B., F.R.S., Fellow of the Royal College of 
Physicians, Professor of Physiology and of General and 
Morbid Anatomy in King’s College, London; Physician 
to King’s College Hospital, &c. 
(Plate XIII.) 
Few anatomical inquiries of late years have excited more 
interest than the present one. Since my paper published in 
the ‘ Philosophical Transactions’ for the year 1860, several 
memoirs have appeared in Germany. In my paper just pub- 
lished in the last volume of the ‘ Transactions,’ I have replied 
to the statements of Ktihne and Kolliker, but I had not suc- 
ceeded in actually tracing the very fine nucleated fibres I 
had demonstrated from one undoubted nerve-trunk to 
another. As a demonstration, therefore, my conclusions 
were defective, though the only explanation to be offered of 
facts I had observed was that included in the view I pro- 
pounded in my first paper. The question between my oppo- 
nents and myself upon this matter is not one of interpreta- 
tion, but a question of simple fact. I assert that the fine 
nerve-fibres can be followed much further than the point 
where Kthne and Kolliker maintain the ends or terminations 
are situated, if the specimen be so prepared as to prevent 
destruction of these most delicate fibres, and the refractive 
power of the medium be such as to enable us to see them. 
I propose to present to the Royal Society next session a 
paper in which I shall demonstrate the truth of the con- 
clusions I have arrived at; but as my specimens are already 
prepared, and during the last few months several drawings 
have been made, I hasten to give a short statement of facts, 
in order that those who have been led to conclusions opposed 
to my own may have an opportunity of studying the very 
same muscle. 
The great width and refractive power of the large elemen- 
tary fibres of the pectoral of the common frog render it 
impossible to follow for any great distance amongst them 
nerve-fibres of the ;;,,th of an inch = ‘000187” in dia- 
meter; and I have therefore long been searching for a very 
thin voluntary muscle, with fine fibres, which, like the 
bladder of the frog, could be examined without the necessity 
