562 DES. GEOEGE AND FEANCES E. HOGGAN ON 



tion or otlier, the forked terminations, or, as Bonnet terms them, 

 " lancet-shaped " endings (a name suitable only for those found in 

 a few animals, such, for example, as the Horse, but not applicable 

 to the Cat, Mole, or Shrew, as shown in figs. 3, 6, and 14), have only 

 been known since 1878, when Arnstein discovered them. These 

 are by far the most prominent nerve-elements upon the ordinary 

 hair-follicles. In the large feelers it is dif&cult to detect them, 

 while in the smaller feelers, as shown by Bonnet, they form a 

 regular tier of short, broadened-out, spade-like forms, immediately 

 beyond the end buds, as he calls the cells already described. A 

 glance at our drawings figs. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 15 wUl make one 

 understand better than any description the character of these 

 forked terminations. The meduUated nerves in, on reaching the 

 zone beneath the opening of the sebaceous gland s, fig. 6, into 

 the hair-follicle, lose their medulla or myeline ; and each axis- 

 cylinder generally breaks up at once into from two to five branches, 

 often remaining as one branch ; at all events the branches lie 

 parallel to each other and to the axis of the hair between the 

 lower layer of epidermic cells lining the follicle and the basement- 

 membrane. As a rule, the medullated nerves only break up 

 into the forked endings when beyond the zone of the cell-termi- 

 nation, although in the ordinary hairs the cells are sometimes 

 observed lying even beyond the points of bifurcation. The forked 

 terminations are, as a rule, fiattened ; and the flat surfaces lie 

 against the inner surface of the basement-membrane and the 

 contiguous surface of the epidermic lining of the follicle. At 

 times the free endings of the forks swell out into hoof-like ter- 

 minations, as shown at g, fig. 7, PL XIII., from the Horse; at 

 other times the points flatten out, as shown at /, fig. 6, from 

 the Water-Shrew ; so that these points may be described as being 

 parallel, lancet-shaped, hoof-shaped, circular or club-shaped, the 

 cause of such variations in shaj)e being to us unknown and pro- 

 bably unimportant. 



We have, as already mentioned, never been able to detect any 

 connexion between the forks on the medullated nerves and the 

 ganglion-cells, on the one hand, or with the coU of non-meduUated 

 fibrils which surround them, on the other. They evidently sub- 

 serve a nervous function diflferent from that of those belonging to 

 the other elements ; and we think that in all probability that func- 

 tion is the sense oi touch, which hitherto all the later observers 

 have attributed to the ganglion-cells we have described. This 



