OF THE HUMAN BODY. 59 



villous : very shining on their inner part, they pre- 

 sent to the eye of tlie observer a spiral circumflex, 

 line in the centre of them.(a24) 



Werner calls this line spiral, and regards it as 

 the germ of the future worm. (255) The existence 

 of real eggs in the female lumbrico'ides being prov- 

 ed, is no equivocal refutation of the opinion of 

 Frisch, who, supposing that these worms were 

 transformed like insects, considered them as so 

 many larvae of the taenia.(326) 



^ Lll. The internal structure of the male lum- 

 brico'ides, diflfers only from that of the female in the 

 sexual organs. (S37) 



At the distance of some lines from the tip of 

 the tail, commences a small canal of a conical fig- 

 ure, named penis by Tyson, uhich, tortuous and 

 large, reaches a third way up the length of the 

 worm, where, contracting and dilating, it forms a 

 vesicle, (compared by Werner to the seminal vesi- 

 cle,) and again narrowing like the horns of the 

 uterus of the female, and tapering like a hair, in- 

 terlaces with the intestinal tube, folded in a surpris- 

 ing manner, and terminates in several loose and 

 floating filaments. (^28) 



The fluid, which fills this system of spermatic 

 vessels, is not so glistening as the fluid of the ute- 

 rus, nor, as in the latter, do we see any granu- 

 lated particles swimming in it. 



§ LIII. Several distinguished naturalists have 

 maintained, by observations altogether illusory, that 

 the lumbrico'ides was viviparous.(229) Pereboom 



