Tuckerman.] 
480 
[Feb. 19 > 
half months old, and the oldest from a woman about sixty years 
of age. In a fungiform papilla of a four-and-one-half months 
foetus, and also in the papillae of one at the sixth month, taste- 
bulbs were present. Hoffmann concludes that taste-bulbs are more 
frequent in embryos and the newly-born than in older individuals ; 
that in embryos and new-born children they occur more frequently 
and in greater number on the free surface of the papillae than in 
the adult, and that in old persons they are but rarely met with in 
this region. 
In a rabbit’s embryo, some 50 mm. in length, Hermann found 
taste-bulbs in the first stages of formation, on the free surface of 
the circumvallate papillae. In an embryo rabbit, 70 mm. long, 
the bulbs of this area were perfectly developed and numerous. 
In the secondary lamellae of the foliate organ and lateral wall of 
the circumvallate papillae of an embryo, 95 mm. long, were seen 
the forerunners of the definite or permanent taste-bulbs in the 
form of modified basal-cells of the epithelium. In embryos of a 
later period, these fusiform cells traverse the entire thickness of 
the epithelial investment of the papilla. At birth a few of these 
bulbs had matured, and by the sixth day of life their development 
was completed. With the appearance of the permanent bulbs those 
of the free surface (having attained their completion during in- 
trauterine life) undergo degeneration, and by the third day there is 
scarcely a vestige of them remaining. 
Recently the tongue of the human embryo has been reexamined 
for gustatory structures by the present writer. In an embryo of 
about the tenth week (the earliest investigated) the gustatory pa- 
pillae, and the lingual papillae in general, were undeveloped nor 
was it possible to determine with any degree of certainty their 
future position. In the tongue of a foetus of the fourteenth week 
several papillae of the circumvallate type, in the early stages of de- 
velopment, were present. The trenches of the papillae were undiff- 
erentiated, but their future position was clearly indicated. The 
proliferations of the epithelium also marked the future position of 
the glands and their ducts. Fungiform papillae in various stages of 
growth were scattered over the dorsum, and at the sides of the 
back of the tongue the lateral gustatory organs (the papillae fo- 
liatae) were sufficiently advanced to be perceptible. A few bulbs 
were detected in the circumvallate papillae of this foetus, but un- 
