234. [Oct 



of the Acad. Nat. Sci. of Philada. Keferred toDrs. Wilson and Town- 

 send, and Mr. E. Harris. 



October 23d. 

 Vice President Morton in the Chair. 



A letter was read from Mr. Caspar Parkinson, dated Philadelphia, 

 Oct. 23d, IS^Q, offering for sale a collection of Marine Shells. 



Dr. Leidy made the following observations on the characters and 

 intimate structure of the odoriferous glands of the Invertebrata. 



Nature has supplied most or all animals with some means of defence or protec- 

 tion, through which their destruction is rendered limited. The character of such 

 means varies exceedingly, some are encased in hard armour, some are endowed 

 with great muscular strength, some with great rapidity of movement, others trust 

 to their minuteness, some to their color, others feign death, many are furnished 

 with formidable instruments, such as teeth, claws, aculei, Ike; others are sup- 

 plied with organs which emit an odour so offensive that an aggressor is frequently 

 compelled to leave what otherwise would have been its victim, &c. It is to the 

 last mentioned organs to which I at present wish to direct, for a few moments, the 

 attention of the meinhers : to the organs denominated odoriferous glands of ani- 

 mals. Bodies of this, or of a homologous character, are possessed by nearly all 

 animals, but they are not in all used as a means of defence. They give origin 

 to the odour wiiich appears to be more or less peculiar to each species of animal, 

 and which probably is in some way connected with the sexual instinct. The 

 scent bag of the Moschus moschiferus is the homologue of theglandulac odorifera; 

 Tysoiii of the human i)repuce; the tcgumentary mucous glands of mollusca, of 

 annelides, of fishes, the tegumentary glands of reptiles, the perspiratory and seba- 

 ceous glands of birds, and of mammals, the odoriferous glands of insects, the anal 

 sacs of carnivora, &c., are all probably of a homologous character. 



Although varying in the degree of their complexity in different animals, and in 

 the character of their secretion, yet the essential structure is the same through- 

 out. Consisting of tubes or follicles of basement membrane, their complexity 

 depends upon their greater or lesser length, their being simple or compound, 

 straight or more or less convoluted, and isolated or aggregated, in connection 

 ■with the mode of supplying to them their nutritive fluid. 



On the interior these cavities or tubes are covered with a single layer of 

 nucleolo-nucleated organic cells, the true elaborators or manufacturers of the 

 secreted matters of the glandular bodies. 



The secreted matter varies exceedingly in its propeities in different animals: 

 in odor being found from that of the perspiratory fluid of man, through a great 

 variety of shades, to that most powerful and odious of all odours, the secretion of 

 the anal glands of the Mephitis Americana; in consistence from a semi-fluid state 

 to the gaseous fluid of the Brachinus crepitans, &c. It is this which constitutes 

 the material contained within the organic cells intermediate to the cell wall and 

 the nucleus. 



The cell wall and nucleus are the agents in connection with the organic force 

 which produce or elaborate the contained matter. And, indeed, this is the ultimate 



