CiAcciOj on the Nerves of the Cornea. 
87 
channels do not exist at all in the cornea. I have never suc- 
ceeded in seeing one of these channels^ and I am convinced 
that the nerves distributed to the cornea are not separated 
from its fibrous elements by any other means but by that 
special transparent material in which they are imbedded. 
II. 
In the first part of this paper I have spoken of all 
those peculiarities which are found in the nerves of the 
cornea ; I propose^ in this second part^ to explain the man- 
ner in which they terminate^ and also their relation to the 
cornea-corpuscles. 
I have studied this point with all possible attention^ and 
I can state positively that the nerves of the cornea do not 
terminate in free extremities. I have often succeeded in 
tracing some of the nerves from their entrance into the 
cornea to their terminal distribution^ and I have observed 
the union of the ultimate branches one with the other. But_, 
if the nerves of the cornea do not end by free extremities, in 
what manner are they arranged in their ultimate distribu- 
tion ? The results of many investigations which I have 
made upon the cornea of several animals_, have led me to con- 
clude that the nerves of the cornea terminate in a network 
or plexus. I attach a different meaning to each of these two 
termSj which are generally employed almost synonymously. 
I understand by the arrangement of nerves in a network, 
when the diflPerent bands of fibres are not so interlaced with 
each other as to prevent us from recognising their respective 
origins ; and by the term plexus, when such an intermingling 
of the bundles of nerve-fibres exists^ that we cannot distin- 
guish the point of their derivation. 
Observation shows that sometimes the network seems to 
result from the close apposition or coalescence of one branch 
with another, without any visible interlacement of the pri- 
mitive nerve-fibres which compose the uniting branches, and 
at other times from the intermixture of the fibres of one 
branch with those of another. Hence two varieties of net- 
work ; the one, which may be called network by the coales- 
cence of nerve-branches with one another, and the other net- 
work by the intermixture of the nerve-fibres of one branch 
with those of another. With regard to the plexus, as the 
meshes produced by the inextricable union of the various 
nerve-bundles may be either large or narrow, so two varieties 
could also be formed, and called the one plexus with large, 
and the other with narrow meshes. 
