PEOCEEDINGS 



OF 



THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE, 



SESSION, 1884. 



ON THE SKIN AND 



CUTANEOUS SENSE ORGANS OF AMIURUS. 



BY PROF. R. RAMSAY WRIGHT, TORONTO. 



[Read before the Canadian Institute, January the 12th, 188U.\ 



The contribution contained in the following pages to the know- 

 ledge of the skin and its sense-organs, in one of the commonest of 

 North American Siluroids (Amiurus catus), may be regarded as an 

 extension to this species of the results obtained by various enquirers 1 

 as to these structures in different European Teleosts. No new facts 

 of great importance are recorded, except in relation to certain struc- 

 tures which are apparently comparable to the nerve-sacs of the 

 Ganoids. The description is chiefly based on sections from skin har- 

 dened in chromic acid in the manner employed by Pfitzner 2 in his 

 study of the epidermis in Amphibia. Far from complete as a histologi- 

 cal study, the account will serve to indicate the chief gaps which exist 

 in our knowledge of the organs concerned, with regard, e.g., to the 

 development and function of the " clavate" cells, the mode of ter- 

 mination of the nerves in the ordinary epithelium, as well as in the 

 neuro-epithelium of the sense organs, &c. The species will commend 

 itself to American Histologists for the investigation of these ques- 

 tions, not only on account of its ready accessibility and the ease 



1 Especially Leydig. 

 " Ueber die Hautdecke and Hautsinnesorgane der Fische." Halle, 1879. 



*Morphol. Jahrb. VI., 475. 

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