MancJiester Memoirs, Vol. xlii. (1898), No. 12. 7 



of a nerve cell linking the auditory epithelial cell with a 

 nerve cell in the auditory territory of the brain, though its 

 dendritic nature is obscured save at its very beginning. 



Analogous to the auditory afferent fibre is the common 

 sensory afferent fibre, connecting the skin with the spinal 

 cord or brain. This, too, begins as a dendritic branching 

 in connection with the epithelial cells of the epidermis, 

 pursues its way as a myelinated axon-like nerve fibre 

 belonging to a nerve cell in the posterior ganglion of 

 a spinal nerve (or its analogue in the case of the cranial 

 nerves), which nerve cell sends forth an indubitable axon 

 to end by linkage with some cell or ceils within the central 

 nervous system. A special feature, however, of these 

 ordinary sensory fibres is that, in animals above fishes, the 

 nucleus with the surrounding part of the cell body does 

 not lie in the course of the fibre, the fibre entering at 

 one pole and issuing at the other, but is drawn away all 

 together from the fibre with which it is connected 

 after the fashion of a T-piece; hence the main cell body 

 seems to give rise to one fibre which divides into two, 

 each pursuing a different course. But this special dispo- 

 sition of the nucleus is of very secondary importance. 



Of more importance is the consideration that, at least 

 in ordinary circumstances, while an efferent fibre seems to 

 be engaged in transmitting influences along itself from a 

 cell in the central nervous system to a muscular fibre or 

 other peripheral tissue, an afferent fibre is engaged 

 in transmitting influences from the skin or other peripheral 

 tissue to the central nervous system. Hence, if we adopt 

 the view that in the afferent fibre the part peripheral to 

 the nucleus is of the nature of a dendrite, in spite of its 

 being clothed with myelin along by far the greater part 

 of its course, we may say that in both cases the influences 

 are transmitted along the axon away from the nucleus or 

 its neighbourhood, and along the dendrite towards the 



