424 
would seem equally difficult to explain. The secondary process may 
offer a better means of contact to the terminals of the nerve fibre 
ending among them, and secondly, the secondary branches, and espe- 
cially the end-discs, may be of use to the cell in its reconstruction, 
if that term may be allowed, after it has functionated for some time. 
Both of these functions, if I mistake not, have been ascribed to the 
protoplasmic branches of multipolar neurons. Still another question, 
to which I am at loss to find an answer, is the following: Why do 
the sympathetic fibres above mentioned, if such they be, end in an 
intra-capsular network and not in a pericellular basket such as has 
been described by EHRLICH (6), CAYAL (7) and DocIEL (5), and as 
were seen by me in two instances in Rana Catesbiana, enclosing 
the cell body of cells from whose axis cylinders no secondary branches 
were given off ? 
Before closing, I beg leave to mention briefly a number of other 
observations which have come to my notice in the study of the spinal 
ganglia of reptilia and of birds. They will, however, receive only a 
very brief mention, further details being reserved until I-have finished 
the investigation now in progress. 
In a study of the spinal ganglia of Chelhydra serpentina, 
my: attention has many times been drawn to structures which resemble 
very closely the cells described in Rana Catesbiana. The pro- 
cesses given off from the axis cylinders seem however to be much finer 
in: tortoise, and to stain with extreme difficulty. The end-discs seem 
also smaller. I have only in two cells, and there not with any degree 
of certainty, been able to trace the processes to the axis cylinder. 
In Chelhydra serpentina I have several times observed peri- 
cellular baskets, but have as yet not been able to connect them with 
any special kind of nerve fibres. 
In the dorsal spinal ganglia of Chelhydra serpentina it is 
not unusual to find a small group of multipolar cells within the capsule 
of the ganglion. They are found on the ventral side of the ganglion 
and are surrounded by pericellular baskets. The axis cylinders of 
these cells are very fine and varicosed. ‘The cells, their axis cylinders 
and dendrits, as also the pericellular baskets enclosing them, have 
every appearance of sympathetic cells. I am inclined to think that 
they are such in Chelhydra. Attention was drawn in the early portion 
of this notice to the fact that DocıEL (5) has observed a similarity 
between the multipolar cells found in the spinal ganglia of mammalia 
