218 SECONDARY ELECTROMOTIVE PHENOMENA IX 



intimately connected with their vital properties, they are also 

 capable of internal positive polarisation, which has never been 

 observed elsewhere ; and in all three, the positive polarisation appears 

 more persistent, the negative more transitory, whence actions in 

 two opposite directions, first negative and then positive, arise. It 

 must however be remembered that I did not experiment with many 

 nor the most important objects, such as glands, to see if they might 

 perhaps show positive polarisation with greater current density and 

 shorter time of closure. 



My investigation of secondary electromotive actions is still in 

 quite an unfinished condition, in which I am not in the habit of 

 publishing results. I hardly think, however, I could have obtained 

 the desired completeness by continuing to work at it longer without 

 publication. Any one who has followed the preceding exposition 

 must perceive that he has before him an overpowering mass of new 

 facts and relations, so that although the best points of view may have 

 been opened out and the right methods indicated, the exhaustive treat- 

 ment of the subject would still require the lifetime of a new observer. 



If, however, positive internal polarisation should be found in 

 other moist porous bodies, that of muscles, nerves, and electrical 

 organs will still remain distinguished by its peculiar relation to the 

 vital activity of the structures. In regular ' monomeric l ' muscles 

 positive polarisation in the direction from the equator to the two ends 

 is stronger than in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, in order 

 to draw conclusions on substantial bases from this fact, accurate 

 knowledge of the distribution of the nerve-endings in these muscles 

 is wanting. I will not take up the question again as I have already 

 discussed it 2 , but will content myself with the remark that it is 

 much the same whether each muscle fibre, as W. Krause states, 

 receives its innervation only at a single point, or as Kiihne says 3 . at 



1 Gesammelte Abhandlungen, vol. ii. p. 570. 



2 Ibid. pp. 568 ff. 



3 I am not quite sure what Kiihne's later views are on this point. He now dis- 

 cards, as based on imperfect examination, his statement that there are six or eight 

 nerve-endings in the fibres of the sartorius (Uber die peripherischen Endorgane der 

 motorischen Nerven, Leipsig, 1862, 4. Plate iii. Fig. xiv. F), and, as a proof of the 

 innervation of muscular fibre at several points, he figures single nerve-endings of 

 amphibia in which the nerve-fibre divides into several parallel terminal branches, 

 which however in his theory form together only one point of innervation (Unter- 

 suchungen aus dem physiologischen Institute der Universitat Heidelberg. Sonderab- 

 druck, Heidelberg, 1879, pp. 115, 129; Untersuchungen am Zitteraal, pp. 416, 417). 

 It is hard to see what this has to do with the question whether each muscular 

 fibre receives its nervous supply at several points distinct from one another to the 

 naked eye, or only at a single point. 



