ON THE CORPUSCULA TACTUS 285 



which, having carefully repeated and extended Wagner's observations, 

 his general conclusions are : — 



1. a. The corpusculated papillae often contain vessels. 

 b. The vascular papilla of the lip contain nerves. 



- c. In the lip and hand there are a few papillae without axile 

 corpuscles and with nerves. 



2. The, tactile corpuscle is not a peculiar body, but the ordinary 

 embryonic connective tissue remaining as the axis of the papilla. 

 Kolliker therefore proposes to call it " axile corpuscle." 



3. The nerves do not enter and terminate in the corpuscle but 

 wind round it and form loops. 



4. The corpuscles are not specially subservient to sensation. 

 Besides the surface of the hand Kolliker found these corpuscles 



only in the red edges of the lips and at the point of the tongue. 



Finally, in Miiller's Archiv for 1852, Wagner, in a communication 

 accompanied by very good figures (Ueber der Tactkorperchen, 

 Corpuscida Tactiis, Miill. Arch. H. 4), referring to the discrepancies 

 between Kolliker and himself, considers the question as to the peculi- 

 arity of the structure of the corpuscles to be still open ; he denies 

 that the nerve fibres form loops on the axile corpuscles (quoting, in 

 confirmation of his own views, Meissner, Ecker, Briiche, and Gtins- 

 burg), and, also, that nerves enter anypapilla;. but those provided with 

 tactile corpuscles. Wagner admits, however, that certain of the 

 papillse containing axile corpuscles also exhibit vascular loops, but 

 these, according to him, always have nervous tissue at their extremi- 

 ties, and are in fact formed by the coalescence of a nervous and 

 vascular papilla. Without pretending to decide, when two such 

 eminent doctors in physiology disagree, I beg to lay before the reader 

 the following results of my own examination of this matter, accom- 

 panied by some figures drawn on a larger scale, and with more 

 attention to detail than those furnished by Wagner or Kolliker. I 

 can best arrange what I have to say in the order of the points in 

 dispute, as given above. 



I. In the human finger I have met with corpusculated papillje 

 containing vascular loops, though rarely (PI. I. [XXIV.] fig. 2) ; but 

 I have observed no papillae without corpuscles, to present nerves. 

 That there is not, however, necessarily an inverse relation between 

 the presence of vessels and that of nerves, is shown by the fungiform 

 papillae of the sides of the base of the tongue in the Frog, in which 

 very evident dark-contoured nerves may be seen terminating in 

 papillae, without any trace of a tactile corpuscle, and with a large 

 vascular loop (fig. 6). 



