238 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



regretted that some sound anatomical work was not 

 initiated to check and extend the results obtained by 

 embryological research. Had this been done, I think 

 few will doubt that much error would have been avoided. 

 However, pioneer work from an anatomical point of 

 view was done by Friant and Allis, who first showed 

 that, as far as the adult was concerned, the fifth nerve 

 took no part in the innervation of the sense organs — a 

 similar conclusion having been reached at about the same 

 time by the embryologists Marshall and Spencer. Hence 

 began the tacit controversy between anatomists and 

 embryologists, both of whom held totally different views 

 as to the innervation of the sense organs of the lateral 

 line. Recently the exclusion of the trigeminal nerve 

 from participating in the innervation of the system has 

 been followed by the elimination (anatomically) of the 

 glossopharyngeal — the nerve from the latter formerly 

 supposed to supply certain of the sense organs of the line 

 having been found on investigation to arise from the 

 so-called lateralis nerve (vagus), and only to accompany 

 the glossopharyngeal. And with regard to the lateralis 

 itself, it is difficult to see how there could ever have been 

 any doubt about it. A careful dissection of its root in a 

 number of the more primitive fishes invariably reveals 

 the fact that it arises both above and in front of the roots 

 of the glossopharyngeus and vagus proper, and hence on 

 anatomical grounds is no more a branch of the vagus than 

 it is a branch of the glossopharyngeal. It is further seen 

 to arise from about the same region as the other lateral 

 line nerves, and the further important discovery, initiated 

 by Mayser, and ably followed up by Strong, that the 

 lateral line nerves arise from a common centre in the 

 brain, establishes as a fact the contention that the lateral 

 line nerves form an independent system by themselves. 



