Recently we reported1 melanoma of the iris and melanosis of the uvea in a young woman who had multiple fibromas of the skin and impaired mentality. We have been fortunate since to study the optic nerves and globes in another woman who had similar generalized skin tumors of more than thirty years' duration. The orbital portion of the left nerve obtained post mortem revealed striking differences from that of the right, while the microscopic examination disclosed in this nerve a new growth, which, though undoubtedly related to glioma, presented many striking features of morphologic interest.
The literature is not lacking in reports of tumor formations in the optic nerve in neurofibromatosis, but up to the present apparently none has been considered authentic. Verhoeff,2 while admitting that "the same influence which causes the supporting tissue of the peripheral nerve to proliferate in the form of a fibroma, may cause