92 SIEBOLD ON HECTOCOTYLUS. 



Article III. 



A few Remarks upon Hectocotylus. By C. Th. von Siebold, 

 Professor at the University of Breslau. 



[From Siebold and Kolliker's Zeitsckrift for June 1852.] 



I HAVE read with the greatest interest the recent discoveries 

 of Verany and H. Miiller as to the true nature of the Hectoco- 

 tyli. I have now, with Kblliker, arrived at the persuasion 

 that Madame Power, through the too great positiveness with 

 which she described the development of the Argonauta in the 

 egg, has partly been the cause of the hitherto erroneous views 

 that have been entertained upon the subject. Since Maravigno, 

 in fact, only reported upon the communications concerning Argo- 

 nauta made by Madame Powder to the Academy of Catania, it is 

 difficult to say for how much share in the error he is responsible 

 by additional careless observations of his own. From the first 

 I was desirous to have a sight of the figures which Madame 

 Power added to her treatise, and which neither Oken, Creplin, 

 Erichson, nor Kolliker had as yet seen. I availed myself of my 

 last visit to Vienna to examine Madame Power's treatise in the 

 Atti deir Accademia Gioenia di Scienze Naturali di Catania 

 (torn, xii.), contained in the Imperial Library, and especially to 

 convince myself of the resemblance of the figures of Argonauta 

 embryos given by Power, with Hectocotylus, I found that the 

 complaints made by Oken (Isis, 1845, p. 617) about the careless 

 editing of these academical papers were fully justifiable, since 

 even in this Viennese copy of the twelfth volume the illustrative 

 plate of Madame Power's essay was wanting. In accidentally 

 turning over the leaves of some of the succeeding volumes, how^- 

 ever, I came in the fourteenth volume upon the missing plate. 

 Figs. 1-4 represent, somewhat magnified, but very coarsely 

 executed, a something which has a remote resemblance to a 

 Hectocotylus ; one distinguishes an elongated clavate body, one 

 end of which runs out into an acute point, and whose thicker 

 end is provided laterally with a double series of indistinct pro- 



