i62 Human Personality. 



"basket" cells (neuroglia), and altogether is placed in a 

 position of ease, as if for intellectual labor. The large 

 cell body contains granular protoplasm ; and within it are 

 to be seen the essential cell nucleus, occasional vacuoles, 

 and very frequently a few grains of pigment. The base 

 of a pyramidal cell is directed toward the axis of the brain 

 convolution, i. e., toward the mass of white medulated 

 nerve fibers of the interior. At the base, the protoplasmic 

 cell-substance is prolonged downward in a number of 

 branched filamentous processes; and ordinarily, about 

 midway, one of these assumes the character of an axis- 

 cylinder process, which, entering the mass of sheathed 

 fibers, becomes one of them, extending eventually to some 

 distant quarter of the brain or of the body. The other 

 processes from the base, especially those from the outer 

 corners, branch out in finer fibrils, which intermingle with 

 those of other cells and with the minute fibers which cer- 

 tain cells appear to produce and cast forth from their cell 

 bodies. 



A still more remarkable process, however, rises from 

 the apex or top of the cell. This apical process is directed 

 upward or outward into the cortex, branching at intervals 

 and extending to a comparatively great height into the 

 " molecular " or outer laj-er of the cortex, where its fibrils 

 lie in contact with those of numerous other cells. 



In certain situations, noticeably at the summit of the 

 convolutions, some of the pyramidal cells attain great size, 



