401 
of Edinburgh, Session 1883-84 
Meissner bodies are found in man, monkeys, and marsupials ; 
otherwise they have no resemblance to these bodies. Properly 
speaking, they are not bodies, but only forked terminations of the 
nerves, formed generally of two or three prongs, and these are 
twisted and intertwined in an intricate manner. Nor do they 
possess any capsular envelopes, the presence of which differentiates 
them from the Hoggan bodies, that being the only distinct differ- 
ence between the two. 
The Hoggan bodies in their external aspect resemble the Pacinian 
bodies, being provided with a greater or less number of capsular 
layers, according to the greater or less depth at which they lie in 
the dermis. The nerve terminations within the body are, however, 
quite distinct from anything yet found in the Mammalia, being in 
general branched immediately after the nerve has become enveloped 
in the capsules. In their branched and contorted form the nerve 
terminations resemble the Browne bodies plus the capsules they 
have received. It is probable that the Browme bodies are formed 
by rupture of some of the non-medullated nerve fibres forming the 
subepidermic plexus, a little beyond the point where a medullated 
nerve has joined the plexus. These ruptured fibres contract upon 
themselves, and thus form the Browne body. As the Browne 
body sinks more deeply into the dermis it seems to receive the 
cellular envelopes which characterise the Hoggan body. 
The Blackwell body is a modified subepidermic nerve ganglion, 
still attached to the epidermis, but of which all the cells get com- 
pressed into a more or less globular or oval form, and are all in 
connection with a very thick medullated nerve. It is indeed 
a modified Meissner body within the epidermis in its most complete 
form, but a subepidermic ganglion in its simplest forms. It is a 
midway link between these two organs. 
The Browne and Hoggan bodies seem to be homologous with the 
forked nerve endings on the hair follicles, and so far they support 
the author’s previously published views that the Pacinian bodies 
are only modifications of the forked endings. 
In most of the sections the sweat glands seem to be greatly 
deficient in number, and as the author has in other animals, especially 
rodents, observed Meissner bodies to be only developed where the 
sweat glands were enormous in size and number, he argues from 
