48 
BULLETIN OF THE LABORATORIES. 
made a discovery, but to have failed to appreciate the relations which 
obtain in the primary disposition of the cortical elements.” 
The study of the cortex in animals which, like rodents, have an 
unconvoluted cerebrum, proves that Betz was entirely right in associ- 
< ating special motor areas with enlarged pyramids, as we hope to suf- 
ficiently show. The real basis for subsequent work is indicated by the 
following passage from Meynert : 
“No morbid change and no physiological experiment gives us any 
reason to hope that we shall be able to explain the difference in form 
of cortical elements in closely neighbaring layers. Morphological in- 
terpretation is the only method which can come to our rescue The 
nerve corpuscles of the gray anterior horns of the spinal cord, of the 
central nuclei of the hypoglossal, facial and abducens nerves, and as 
far upwards as the oculomotor nerve, all show long, slender cell forms 
with numerous processes. These processes seem to arise with a broad 
base from the body of the cell. The same peculiarities of configura- 
tion which we observe in those nerve cells, which are connected with 
the centrifugal nerve tracts, are found in the cortical pyramids, and 
there can only be explained by the similarity in the distribution of 
those bodies. Gerlach has compared the median base process with 
those spinal cell processes which enter the anterior roots. The 
granules of the fourth cortical layer, which are distinguished from the 
free nuclei by their size and protoplasm, from the spider and spindle 
shaped cells by the distinct boundary of their protoplasm, and by a 
lesser number of stout processes, may be likened to those branched 
ganglionic cells which occur in centres connected with centripetally 
conducting tracts. \ — {Meynert, Psychiatry, p. 66.) 
The paper of Golgi (Revista sperimentale, 1883), has remained 
inaccessible to us but, judging from excerpts, Koelliker’s criticism 
(Anat. Anzeiger, 1888, II, No. 15,) seems justified. Especially we feel 
constrained to call attention to Koelliker’s suggestion that the outer 
zone contains fibre tracts of major importance. This we had previ- 
ously determined and in the case of lower vertebrates the existence of 
prominent tracts in the so called neuroglia layer is well demonstrated. 
Koelliker says: “ Sehr eigentuemlich ist, was Golgi ueber die 
axencylinderfortsaetze die nervenzellen mittheilt. Dieselben sollen in 
zwei Formen vonkommen. Bei den centrifugal-wirkenden (motoris- 
chen) Zellen soli der Fortsatz im ganzen mit gleichbleibenden Staerke 
zum axencylinder einem dunkelrandigen Fasser werden, auserdem 
