Studies in Embryonic and Larval Development in Amphibia: II. The Spinal Motor-Root

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Abstract
In 1913 G. E. Coghill initiated a series of papers on the neuro-embryology of the Urodele Ambystoma with a description of the earliest stages of the motor system of the trunk (Coghill, 1913). His main conclusion is stated early in the paper in these words: The neurones … which establish the earliest contact with the cells of the myotome are found in Amblystoma to be at the same time the neurones of the motor tract in the central nervous system. The primary ventral root fibre is a collateral of the tract cell. (Coghill, 1913, p. 121.) Thirteen years later, among a group of other papers on the developing nervous system of Ambystoma, he returned to this theme, and in a series of examples described the form of the first nerve process within the basal plate of the cord.