18 ^fof. KoLLiKER on the Structure of 



tain relation between them. It was then that the view first occurred to me 

 that the Hectocotylce might be the males of the Cephalopods on which they 

 live, when I called to mind that the twelve specimens of Hect. Tremoctopodis 

 violacei and the three of Hect. Argonautce which I had obtained at Messina 

 were all males, and that although a very large number of Argonauts had been 

 examined with reference to their sexual organs, no one had yet been fortunate 

 enough to discover male organs in them. I can prove that of 280 Argonauts, of 

 which Poli examined 30, Delia Chiaje 50, Van Beneden 3, Owen 100, Brode- 

 rip 60, and myself 50, there was not a single male. On this assumption it was 

 easy to explain why no one had hitherto been able to detect the male of 

 Argonauta, although it must be admitted that males are very abundant ; for 

 as Owen, Madame Power, myself and many others have observed, nearly all 

 the female Argonauts carry about with them impregnated bags of eggs, con- 

 taining embryos more or less developed. On the other hand, I could not 

 attach too much importance to this view, as it appeared too hazardous to 

 believe that the small vermiform Hectocotyloe with their (as far as could be 

 ascertained) imperfect organization, could be the males of some of the larger 

 Cephalopoda, which stand so high as regards their structure. I was compelled 

 indeed to admit that something similar takes place with regard to some ani- 

 mals of the class Crustacea ; in which, as Nordmann has shown, in the genera 

 Achtheres, Lernceopoda, Tracheliastes, &c., the males are not only many times 

 (frequently a thousand times) smaller than the female, but also live only upon 

 the females attached in the neighbourhood of their sexual openings, and more- 

 over (which is of the greatest importance) are quite different in their external 

 form and in their structure. Nevertheless, in spite of this important analogy, 

 I did not yet venture to attach full credit to my conjecture, more especially 

 because other genera of Cephalopods, as for example Sepia, Sepiola, Octopus, 

 Eledone, &c. possess males of the common form ; and because I was not in a 

 condition (as Nordmann had done with reference to the above-named para- 

 sitical Crustacea) to refer the deviating form of the Hectocotylce to any even 

 embryonary form of Cephalopoda. 



So far had I arrived by my own investigations ; that is to say, I had good 

 grounds for the conjecture that the two Hectocotyloe were the males of certain 

 Cephalopods, but I was not in a condition to place it beyond doubt, when 



