138. While it is thus doubtful whether dark-bordered fibres are always immediately connected with cells, it is demonstrable that multitudes of fibres have only an indirect connection with cells, being developed as outgrowths from other fibres. Dr. Beale considers that in each such outgrowths have their origin in small neuroplasmic masses (his “germinal matter”). That is another question. The fact here to be insisted on is that we often find groups of cells with only two or three fibres, and groups of fibres where very few cells exist. Schröder van der Kolk says that in a sturgeon (_Accipenser sturio_) weighing 120 pounds he found the spinal cord scarcely thicker than that of a frog; the muscles of this fish are enormous, and its motor nerves abundant; yet these nerves entered the cord by roots no thicker than a pig’s bristle; and in the very little gray matter of the cord there was only a cell here and there found after long search. Are we to suppose that these rare cells were the origins of all the motor and sensory nerves? A similar want of correspondence may be noticed elsewhere. Thus in the spinal cord of the Lamprey my preparations show very few cells in any of the sections, and numerous sections show none at all. Stieda counted only eight to ten cells in each horn of some osseous fishes, except at the places where the spinal roots emerged. In the eel and cod he found parts of the cord quite free from cells, and in other parts found two, three, never more than ten. In birds he counted from twenty-five to thirty. Particular attention is called to this fact of the eel’s cord being thus deficient, because every one knows the energetic reflex action of that cord, each separate segment of which responds to peripheral stimulation. It may indeed be urged that these few cells were the origin of all the fibres, the latter having multiplied by the well-known process of subdivision; and in support of this view the fact may be cited of the colossal fibres of the electric fishes, each of which divides into five-and-twenty fibres, and in the electric eel each fibre is said by Max Schultze to divide into a million of fibrils. But I interpret this fact otherwise. It seems to me to prove nothing more than that the neuroplasm has differentiated into few cells and many fibres. And my opinion is grounded on the evidence of Development, presently to be adduced. If we find (and this we do find) fibres making their appearance anywhere _before_ multipolar cells appear, the question is settled. 139. Dr. Beale regards the large caudate cells of the centres as different organites from the oval and pyriform cells, and thinks they are probably stations through which fibres having different origins merely pass, and change their directions; and Max Schultze says that no single fibril has been found to have a central origin; every fibril arises at the periphery, and passes through a cell, which is thus crossed by different fibrils.[167] (Comp. Fig. 17.)