No. 437.] SENSE ORGANS IN EISHES. 



I presented before the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science at the Pittsburg meeting the report of certain 

 experiments made upon the common cat fish, Ameiurus, which 

 go to show that this animal actually tastes with the terminal 

 buds known to be freely distributed over the body surfaces and 

 especially on the barblets. Since that report I have extended 

 these observations upon a number of marine fishes, particularly 

 the gadoids, and the report upon this work is now in press in 

 the Bulletin of the U. S. Fish Commission. 



It may be regarded as established that fishes which possess 

 terminal buds in the outer skin taste by means of these organs 

 and habitually find their food by their means, while fishes which 

 lack these organs in the skin have the sense of taste confined to 

 the mouth. The delicacy of the sense of taste in the skin is 

 directly proportional to the number of terminal buds in the 

 areas in question. Numerous unrelated types of bony fishes 

 from the siluroids to the gadoids which possess terminal buds 

 have developed specially modified organs to carry the buds and 

 increase their efficiency. These organs may take the form of 

 barblets or of free filiform fin rays and the free rays of the pelvic 

 and dorsal fins of some gadoid fishes are thus explained. 



The results of this examination may be summarized in the 

 following form : 



by general cutaneous nerves ; primary centers, dorsal horns of spinal 



ing cells, the former extending only part way through the sensoiy 

 epithelium. ^ Typically^ arranged in lines on various parts of the 



