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KEFLECTIONS on the CKANIAL NEKVES and 



SENSE OKGANS of FISHES. 



By F. J. Cole, 



Demonstrator and Assistant Lecturer in Zoology 

 in University College, Liverpool. 



[Read Feb. 11th, 1898.] 



A few years ago, on being asked by Prof. W. E. Bitter, 

 of California, what I was working at, and replying that it 

 was the nerves and sense organs of fishes, he remarked 

 that I was "in good company and plenty of it." Those 

 who have started with Thomas Willis's " Cerebri Ana- 

 tome," published in 1664, and worked onwards, will have 

 realised that this observation is sufficiently well founded 

 to entail in any work on the subject a somewhat con- 

 siderable amount of bibliographical research. He will 

 have realised, first, that Willis himself, if we consider his 

 time, knew a very great deal, and second, that even his 

 knowledge is but as the proverbial drop in the ocean com- 

 pared with what his numerous successors accomplished. 

 It will also have been patent that work which started 

 with nerves often ended in something of a widely different 

 character. The study of cranial nerves and sense organs, 

 ndeed, involves problems of considerably wider import 

 than those with which they are directly concerned, and, 

 in fact, will always be an important factor in determining 

 many problems of vertebrate phylogeny. In a forthcoming 

 work, I have endeavoured, as far as opportunities per- 

 mitted, to deal somewhat exhaustively with a portion of 

 this extensive subject. I fully realise that this attempt 

 is imperfect, but it is perhaps sufficient to form the basis 

 of the following sketch, in which an attempt has been 

 made to summarise a few of the more important results 

 which have hitherto been established. 



The older anatomists arbitrarily divided the cranial 



