INTERNAL ANATOMY OF INSECTS. 153 
small orbicular vesicle, connected by a short tubular foot- 
stalk with the main reservoir a . A similar organ was dis- 
covered by Malpighi in the imago of the silkworm*, who 
denominates it the uterus ,• to which indeed it seems ana- 
logous, and which he also regards as a reservoir for the 
sperm for the gradual fecundation of the eggs\ But in 
that fly the organ is of a rather different shape, and the 
interior vessel terminates in several spherical vesicles c . 
John Hunter by the most decisive experiments, such as 
covering the eggs of the unimpregnated moth, after ex- 
clusion, with the liquor taken from the spermatheca in 
those which had been impregnated, and rendering them 
fertile, he demonstrated that this organ was a reservoir for 
the spermatic fluid, to impregnate the eggs as they were 
ready for exclusion, and that coition and impregnation 
were not simultaneous 11 . It is not improbable that in 
all insects whose eggs are gradually laid, this provision 
for their gradual fecundation, if carefully sought for, 
might be detected e . Rifferschweils is of opinion, that 
a Herold Schmetterl t. iv.f. 1. x. &c. Plate XXX. Fig. 12. d. 
" Be Bombyc. 36. c Ibid. t. xii./. 1. I. and/. 2. O. M. 
11 Philos. Tram. 1/92. 186. 
Swammerdam, in dissecting the female of Oryctcs nasicornis, dis- 
covered a blind vessel opening into the vagina, and at the other or 
inner extremity not terminated by any secretory tube, containing 
a yellowish matter, that seems analogous to the organ mentioned 
in the text ; and in the hive-bee he found a similar organ covered 
with air-vessels, which he supposes to be connected with the Colle- 
Icrium (see above, p. 132.), and which he states to contain a slimy 
matter. Bibl. Nat. i. 151. b. t. xxx./. 10. g. 204. b. t. xxix./. 3. t. 
Perhaps likewise the organ discovered by M. L. Dufour in Scolia, — 
which he imagines to belong to the poison-secretor, and which he 
describes as a sac consisting of a double tunic, the exterior one mus- 
cular and the interior membranous, and fdled with a blueish-green 
gelatinous matter (N. Diet. d'Hist. Nat. xxx. 388.)— may be a tper- 
matheca. 
