ANGULAR OE CAUDATE NERVE CELLS. 189 



peculiar anatomical fact recorded in my paper, Pro- 

 fessor Alexander Bain, looking at the 1 subject from a 

 totally different side, was led to conclusions concern- 

 ing the arrangement of the nervous mechanism 

 agreeing in all important particulars with my own, 

 which had been deduced from observations upon the 

 tissue itself. 



Deiters, Boddaert, and other observers, have stated 

 that one dark-bordered nerve fibre enters each of 

 these cells. If this be so, we may consider the axis 

 cylinder as splitting up in the cell into a number of 

 branches, some of which pass into every one of the 

 so-called "protoplasm" fibres which leave the cell 

 and are supposed to terminate a short distance from it. 

 My own observations lead me to conclude that all the 

 fibres are composed of the same material and exhibit 

 precisely the same structure and refractive power, 

 but that one fibre (Deiters' dark-bordered fibre) does 

 not divide until it has passed some distance from the 

 cell, while the others give off branches much closer 

 to it. 



Connected with the cells of the gray matter of the 

 brain, particularly of the sheep, is one long fibre which 

 may often be followed for the distance of the tenth or 

 twelfth of an inch without giving off a single branch. 

 The other fibres, on the contrary, break up into a con- 

 siderable number of ramifications near to the cell. 

 I cannot agree with Deiters and Max Schultze in 

 regarding these fibres as of a totally different nature 

 from the long one. Although in Deiters' figures the 

 long dark-bordered fibre is represented as if it were 

 altogether different in structure from the other fibres 

 of the cell, I do not discover this difference indicated 

 in the beautiful photograph of Boddaert, from which 

 it appears to me all the fibres of the cell possess the 

 same refractive power. This could not be the case 

 if one were " dark-bordered " and all the rest consisted 

 of what these observers call " protoplasm." The 



