A correspondence item entitled ‘A warning against revival of the classic tenets of gross anatomy related to nerve–muscle specificity’ was recently published in the Journal of Anatomy (Shinohara, 1996a). The present correspondent fully agrees with some aspects of his opinion, in particular, the 3 laws about applications which he described, and he also appreciates his approach to the argument based on the results of embryology and experimentation. However, his denial of morphological interpretations based on the theory of nerve–muscle specificity may be due to an incomplete understanding of the current status of the theory.