168 Zoological Notices, 



tic animalcules of gigantic size, whilst others regarded them 

 as parasitic worms. Their nature, however, was ill understood, 

 and their use is altogether different, as we shall proceed to 

 shew. MM. Milne Edwards and Peters have studied toge- 

 ther all the Cephalopoda of which they could procure males. 

 These were the Octopus vulgaris, the long armed Octopus, the 

 Octopus moschatm, the Sepia officinalis, and the common Cal- 

 mar {Loligo vulgaris.) In all these animals the spermatic 

 filaments, or Needham's bodies, were encountered in abun- 

 dance, and presented a very complicated structure. But there 

 was always to be distinguished a case in form of a pod or husk, 

 which was composed of two coats, and which inclosed a long 

 tortuous tube like an intestine, filled with a white opaque mat- 

 ter, and connected with an apparatus which was more or less 

 translucid. This intestine-looking tube is a spermatic reser- 

 voir containing thousands of zoosperms, and the apparatus to 

 which it is attached at its anterior extremity, serves to burst 

 the case, so producing the escape of the reservoir itself. The 

 structure of the ejaculatory instrument and its mechanism 



varies in the different species These bodies, 



which Cuvier called the famous filamentary machines of Need- 

 ham, are neither spermatic animalcules, nor parasitic worms, 

 but instruments of fecundation, such as, according to our know- 

 ledge, there is no similar example of in the animal kingdom. 

 We propose to designate them Spermatophorce, and they can- 

 not so well be compared to any thing as to grains of pollen 

 which likewise inclose feeundatory corpuscules, and which also 

 burst, to discharge themselves when the male apparatus comes 

 in contact with the female organs of the flower. In all pro- 

 bability, these spermatophora3 are, in the Cephalopoda, also a 

 means by which the seminal liquor reaches the female appa- 

 ratus, notwithstanding the absence of an external organ. Re- 

 specting the spermatic animalcules, which are inclosed in the 

 interior of these singular bodies, they differ in no respect from 

 those of other animals. — Milne Edwards and Peters. 



2. Circulation of Blood in the Pyrosoma. — I have re- 

 cently collected in the Bay of Villefranche, a small speci- 

 men of the singular aggregation of animals so well described, 

 first by Peron and Lesueur, and afterwards b} M. Savig- 



