ANATOMY OF THE GUSTATORY ORGAN 111 



sum of the tongue and Ponzo (1905) identified them on 

 the palatine tonsils, the hard palate, and the cervical 

 part of the esophagus, regions from which they are 

 absent in the adult. As early as 1875 Hoffmann called 

 attention to the fact that in human embryos and newly 

 born babes taste-buds were commonly found on the free 

 surfaces of the vallate papillae, situations from which 

 they disappear in later life. This observation was con- 

 firmed by Tuckerman (1889) as well as by Hermann 

 (1885), who, however, worked upon the rabbit. Thus the 

 gustatory apparatus of man and of other mammals is 

 by no means constant, but suffers reduction from the late 

 embryonic period to the adult state. On the tongue of 

 man the reduction is chiefly in the middle region of the 

 distal two-thirds so that, as Stahr (1902) has pointed 

 out, the center of taste in this organ shifts with growth 

 from a position near the tip of the tongue to one in the 

 neighborhood of the vallate papillss. This opinion is in 

 agreement with the observation of Heiderich (1906) that 

 after birth the taste-buds of the vallate papillae show 

 almost no change. 



Wherever taste-buds occur in man, except on the 

 tongue, they are found simply imbedded in the epithe- 

 lium of the mucous membrane of the region concerned. 

 On the tongue, however, they are almost invariably asso- 

 ciated with certain kinds of papillae. The human tongue 

 possesses several classes of these structures, which from 

 their forms have been designated as conical, filiform, 

 f ungif orm, foliate, and vallate. The plush surface of the 

 dorsum of the tongue is produced by innumerable fine 

 conical and filiform papillaB. These, however, almost 

 never have taste-buds associated with them. The other 



