466 PAPILLA OF THE TONGUE. 



difference in their form ; many of them being irregularly angular 

 and serrated as well as conical. 



Soemmering and other German anatomists consider the 

 smallest papillae as a fourth class, which they call the Jiliform: 

 these lie between the others. 



It is probable that these papillae are essential parts of the 

 organ of taste ; and their structure is of course an interesting 

 object of inquiry. 



The nerves of the tongue have been traced to the papillae, 

 and have been compared by some anatomists to the stalk of 

 the apple, while the papillae resembled the fruit ; but their 

 ultimate termination does not appear to have been ascer- 

 tained.* 



— The papills maximae or capitatae, are supplied, accor- 

 ding to Cloquet, by filaments from the glosso-pharyngeal 

 nerve, the fungiformes by filaments from the fifth. The 

 papillae maximae appear to consist only of a collection of 

 mucous follicles, which differ only from those of the soft palate 

 and lips, by standing out more in relief. 



— The follicles of each papilla open occasionally upon the side; 

 several open by a common orifice at the top of the papilla, 

 which is often very visible to the naked eye, as a little reddish 

 point. Weber succeeded in injecting this orifice with mercury, 

 and found it led to a central cavity irregularly divided by septae 

 into cells, visible to the naked eye, having some resemblance 

 to, but much larger than those of the parotid. Other mucous 

 follicles of a simpler kind are spread over the whole surface of 

 the tongue between the smaller papillae. Some are mere 

 small pouches, opening by simple orifices, without canals. 

 Others are more complicated, and according to Weber, who 

 filled them with mercury, have ducts three or four lines in 

 length, which run down between the muscular fibres of the 



* In the explanation of the plates, referred to in the following sentence, 

 Soemmering observes, that when the fibrillae of the lingual nerve of the fifth 

 pair are traced to the papillsB of the second class, they swell out into a conical 

 form ; and these nervous cones are in such close contact with each other, that 

 the point of the finest needle could not be insinuated into the papilla; without 

 touching a nerve. 



