226 MODE OF TEEMINATION OF MOTOR NERVES, BY W. KUHNE. 



nerve eminence, resting on a nucleated bed of protoplasm or a 

 matrix; and a second mode, in which, as in Amphibia, the 

 matrix is absent, and the nerve ends in an elongated and 

 branched fibre-like plate. Only the Amphibia possess terminal 

 bulbs, the analogue of which Cohnheim stands alone in con- 

 sidering to be found in the plates of Lizards ; that is to say, in 

 the small granular sessile and more conical corpuscles that are 

 found in these animals, respecting which further investigations 

 are needed. Greeff first advanced the view that the mode of 

 nerve termination in Milnesium may be assimilated to an ex- 

 panded flat ganglion cell adherent to the muscular fibre ; and 

 were we to transfer this idea to the higher animals we should 

 have to regard their nerves as terminating in a collection 

 of ganglion cells, corresponding in number to the nuclei pre- 

 sent, or in a ganglion cell containing many nuclei, or perhaps 

 in a series of ganglion cells which have become fused together ; 

 that is to say, which have formed a ganglionic nerve plate. 

 This view does not, however, materially advance our knowledge; 

 for, even if it be correct, we shall have to seek for the minute 

 anatomy of these terminal ganglion cells just as has been done 

 for those of the nervous centres and others ; and if we have 

 already acquired a considerable amount of information respect- 

 ing these, we yet know still more in regard to the nerves 

 terminating in muscle, since we are acquainted with the plates, 

 and their subjacent protoplasm, from which they are rarely 

 sharply differentiated. We need not despair of discovering 

 their analogue in all nerve eminences, even in the minute ones 

 of Milnesium, though perhaps better instruments and improved 

 methods of investigation will be required to discover the finer 

 points of their structure than those we at present possess. 



As long as the granular contents of the nerve eminence were 

 regarded as the proper continuation of the axis cylinder, as it 

 now is by Rouget, in the case of Mammals and Reptiles though 

 he does not perceive that this involves a contradiction to his 

 former very decisive and explicit statements that in the Arthro- 

 poda his system of fibres was the only part of a truly nervous 

 nature, the remaining structures, i. e. the granular mass and 

 the nuclei, being accessory so long could the view be main- 

 tained that the nerve becomes directly continuous with the 



