190 Sir Everard Home's observations 
increased, as not only to pour the blood into the interstices, 
and the open space which they inclose, but to distend them, 
overcoming the elastic power that, under ordinary circum- 
stances, keeps them collapsed. 
The corpus spongiosum differs in nothing from the cor- 
pora cavernosa, but in the parts being formed upon a smaller 
scale ; there being no open space in the middle or central line 
of the trellis work ; and the ligamentous elastic covering 
which surrounds it, having no muscular fibres intermixed 
with its substance. When a transverse section of the corpus 
spongiosum is examined in the microscope, the orifices of six 
or seven divided arterial trunks are distinctly seen in different 
parts of the section, as in PI. XXI, Fig. 1. 
As the corpus spongiosum may be said to be continued 
into, and to form the glans, the internal structure of which 
is of the same kind, I was desirous that Mr. Bauer should 
examine the covering of that body in the microscope, to as- 
certain whether there were any papillae upon its surface, so 
different from those of the skin generally, as to account for this 
part having a sensation peculiar to itself, and as unlike the 
common feeling of touch, as the sense of taste, which is pe- 
culiar to the tongue ; this last I have explained upon a former 
occasion to the Society, is confined to the tip ; since, when the 
sense of taste is destroyed by the nerves that produce it being 
injured, the common sensations of the rest of that organ, as 
well as its voluntary motions, are as perfect as before. 
From the annexed magnified representations of a portion of 
the glans, showing the papillae on its surface, it is evident that 
such a peculiar organization must be constructed to produce 
a more than ordinary delicate sensation. PI. XXI, Fig. 5, 
Fig. 6 . 
