THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 125 



dition obtains in the anterior fibres, which spread out in a 

 radiating manner, passing at first forwards between the pyra- 

 mids and olivary nucleus, and afterwards backwards in a sharp 

 curve, superficially round the latter, into the lateral fasciculi. 

 A second division of the internal transverse fibres goes behind 

 the olivarv nucleus with which it has no connection, directly 

 from the raphe, through the posterior part of the olivary 

 columns and the eminentuc teretes, outwards and backwards, 

 also into the restiform bodv. All these fibres, and most of 

 them obviously so, arc associated together, and appear to me 

 to be continued from the restiform bodies and the peduncles 

 of the cerebellum, into the anterior divisions of the medulla 

 oblongata. "With respect, however, to their more intimate 

 relations, concerning which Stilling's work and my ' Micro- 

 scopical Anatomy' may be consulted, little is as yet known. 



The grey substance, in the medulla oblongata, is collected 

 into larger masses, chiefly in three situations, viz. in the 

 olivarv and restiform bodies, and on the floor of the rhomboid 

 fossa (fourth ventricle): 1. the grey substance of the olivary 

 bodies forms, as is well known, a folded lamella, constituting 

 a capsule closed on all sides except the inner, which, although 

 it occupies the situation of the anterior horns of the spinal 

 cord, which are continued nearly to its inferior border, still 

 has no direct connection with them; appearing, also, to be 

 otherwise isolated from all other grey substance. Within it, 

 besides the very numerous nerve- fibres of the transverse fibre- 

 system, which traverse it for the most part in straight lines, 

 there occur in great numbers smaller nerve-cells, measuring 

 0008 — 0012"' in diameter, and of a rounded form, with 3 — 5 

 branching processes, and containing in the interior yellowish 

 granules, to which the colour of the olivary bodies is due. 

 The closest observation has failed to afford me any indication 

 of a connection between these cells and the fibres which run 

 among them. On a level with the two upper thirds of the 

 olivary body, is placed, behind the nucleus and wholly isolated 

 from it, the body termed by Stilling the accessory olivary 

 nucleus, in the form of a flattened, yellowish band, of exactly 

 the same structure as the grey substance of the olivary body, 

 and also traversed by horizontal nerve-fibres, and in fact by 

 fibres which have for the most part already passed through 



