248 SPECIAL HISTOLOGY. 



connection with the nervous plexuses, only at a point of limited extent. 

 The proof of the existence of similar conditions in other small muscles 

 was more difficult, as in those of the orbit, where the nerves reach the 

 muscles at acute angles, follow a longer course in them, with their 

 primary branches, and form their ultimate ramifications at various, 

 more or less widely separated points ; yet even in this case it was 

 tolerably well made out. It is easy to understand that, in the larger 

 muscles, a microscopic examination, in toto, is impossible ; but it can be 

 shown in other ways, as by the preparation and examination of minute 

 flat fasciculi taken in their entire length, that conditions exist, at all 

 events in some of them, similar to those which appear to be evidenced 

 in the small muscles. It is thus seen, especially in muscles of lax 

 structure, that each fasciculus presents precisely the same conditions as 

 an entire smaller muscle. How the distribution of the nerves is effected 

 in muscles with long fasciculi (sartorius, latissimus dorsi, &c.), I have 

 not examined ; it is probable that in this case each primitive fasciculus 

 is joined by the nerves at several points, widely apart. 



Valentin and Emmert, in the year 1836, simultaneously described the 

 terminations of the primitive nerve-fibres in the muscles, to be in the form 

 of loops, and the former maintained that the nerves of sensation termi- 

 nated in a similar way. But Physiology having more recently shown 

 that she does not well know what is to be done with these loops, and 

 Microscopic Anatomy having distinctly demonstrated the existence, in 

 many situations, of other modes of termination of the nerves (Pacinian 

 bodies, &c.), the loops have fallen into such discredit, that the question 

 now is, not as before, whether, besides the loops, there are other modes 

 of termination, but rather, whether loops really exist anywhere ? With 

 respect to the muscles especially, anatomists seem inclined to deny their 

 existence altogether, since divisions and terminations of nerve-fibres have 

 been discovered in them ; but this conclusion, from what has been re- 

 marked above, would be incorrect. Henle also, in Canstatt's Jahresb. 

 f. 1847, p. 63, says, that in his opinion the loops had been too rashly 

 discarded; while on the other hand, Wagner, with reference to this ques- 

 tion, places the analogy with what is seen in the Frog, &c., above direct 

 observation, and denies the existence of loops. With respect to divisions 

 of the nerves, Wagner ("Gott. Nach.," 1852, p. 27), finds them to be 

 tolerably frequent in the muscles of the Mouse. I would, moreover, re- 

 mark, that in one case, I think I noticed a minute ganglion with about 

 five cells on a nervous twig in the omohyoid of man ; the observation, 

 however, was not satisfactory, the muscle having been previously treated 

 with soda. 



In the Invertebrata, many observers have long since described free 

 terminations of the nerve fibrils, and their insertion with expanded ends 

 into the muscular fibres, as Doyere in the Tardigrada, and Quatrefages 



