CUTANEOUS NEBVE-TERMINATIONS IN MAMMALS. 563 



much may, however, be said, that the forked endings are true 

 terminations *, which cannot be said of either the nerve-cells or 

 the various categories of nou-medullated fibrils in coils or intra- 

 epidermic ramifications. 



While, however, we are inclined to look upon the forked endings 

 on hairs as the true terminations of tactile nerves, there is one 

 argument against this view, which it is only fair to state here. 

 It is this, that in the feelers (the hairs which are supposed to be 

 far excellence the tactile nerves) the system of forked endings is, 

 comparatively speaking, poorly developed, while the system of 

 ganglionic cells is even hugely represented. 



Unfortunately, we human beings can form no conception of 

 the kind of impression received by the lower animals when their 

 feelers come into contact with any object ; but if we were to admit 

 that these hairs only give the feeling of touch pure and simple, 

 as we feel it in our ordinary hairs, and, further, that the predo- 

 minant nerve-element found there must be the one which conveys 

 the sense of touch, then assuredly the cellular terminations would 

 be the elements. 



Still, however, holding, as we do, that our own perceptions of 

 the sense of touch, as experienced in ordinary hairs, is a much 

 safer criterion to go by than any hypothetical conception of what 

 may happen in the feelers of the lower animals, we hold that the 

 elements which predominate in our ordinary hairs — that is to say, 

 the forked nerve-endings — have the greatest reason to be consi- 

 dered the tactile terminations of the nerves. 



Develo^pment of Nerve-terminations on Hairs. 



Hitherto little appears to have been made out of the manner 

 in which the various nerve-termiuations make their appearance 

 upon the hair-follicles ; and our own efforts in this direction have 

 not been very successful. In the case of the forked endings, we 

 have not yet been able to distinguish them at a period prior to birth. 

 In figs 4 and 5 we give examples of the largest and smallest hairs 

 we could find on the nose of a newly-born kitten. In both cases, 

 however, the nerve -fibrils were so exceedingly fine that they 



* We now consider that these forked endings are homologous with, the ter- 

 minal fibre in Pacinian bodies, with the club-shaped nerve-endings in the touch- 

 bodies in the fingers and toes of Man and other animals, and with the flattened 

 plates in the touch-bodies of Graudry in Birds. Our researches in this respect 

 will shortly be ready for pubHcation. 



42* 



