TIIE ORGAN AND SENSE OF TASTE IN FISHES. 
247 
The only other paper of importance dealing with the sense of taste in the fishes 
experimentally which has come to my notice is the great monograph on the senses of 
taste and smell by Nagel (’94). He investigated the sense of taste in the following 
fishes: 
(1) Fresh-water Types: Anguilla anguiUa (old and quite young); Cyprinus carpio; Barbus fluvia- 
lilis; Leuciscus ceplialus; Gasterosteus aculeatus; Gobbis flimulilis; Silurus glcmis (young 
specimen ) ; Cobitis fossilis. 
(2) Marine Types: Pristiurus; Scyllium catulus and S. canicula; Syngnathus acus; Urcmoscopus 
scaber; Loplnus piscatorius. 
Nagel tested all the fresh water fishes mentioned in this list by bringing bitter, 
sour, sweet, and salty solutions in contact with the skin, without getting any response 
to the stimulus. Thus, the carp, wels ( Silurus ), and stickleback did not respond to 
a stimulation of the skin of the body with quinine, though the last-named fish gave 
an immediate response when the solution touched the lips. lie concludes: 
l ii the fresh-water fishes, according to my observations, the power of taste is completely lacking 
in the outer skin; or, more precisely, in no part except the head is there gustatory sensibility. 
For such of these forms as possess no terminal buds on the skin of the body this 
is doubtless true; but for the other fishes, including, doubtless, Silurus and Cyjprinus , 
it is certainly a mistake. In gadoid fishes I got a clear reaction against quinine 
solution when it was applied to the free fin rays, which are known to be supplied 
with terminal buds, but not from other parts of the skin. 
Among the elasmobranch fishes Nagel found Scyllium catulus and S. canicula 
to be sensitive to very dilute solutions of vanilla all over the body and fins. Bitters 
were not perceived thus, nor oil of rosemary, but they are very sensitive to creosote. 
He controverts Schwalbe’s argument that the terminal buds of the outer skin of fishes 
probably have a gustatory function by reason of the similarity of their structure 
with that of taste buds in the mouth, and concludes: 
A real sense of taste, such as man and many other animals have in the mouth, appears to be 
absent in the outer skin of all fishes and Amphibia. 
It will appear from the following pages that this conclusion is erroneous. 1 will 
merely add here that if Nagel had worked with sapid solutions, with which his fishes 
were presumably already familiar, instead of with substances like sugar and vanilla, 
toward which no clearly established reflexes had been established in the natural 
environment of the fishes, his conclusions might have been different. 
TERMINAL BUDS AND THEIR INNERVATION. 
The terminal buds of the fishes tabulated above, and doubtless many others 
which might be mentioned, are of the same type and presumably provided with 
similar innervation by communis nerves, for cutaneous branches of the communis 
root of the facial nerve are known to reach the areas provided with the buds in all 
cases which have been adequately studied. These organs may therefore all be 
defined morphologically as belonging to the communis system of sense organs, along 
with the taste buds of the mouth cavity and as distinct from the lateral-line organs 
and all other types of sense organs. In order to support this position there remains 
merely the proof that the terminal buds and taste buds have a similar function. 
This evidence is presented subsequently in this paper. 
