uterus". In Peripatoides novae-zealmidiae Hutt., which lias large 

 eggs with much yolk, the stalk indeed becomes hoUow, but the 

 cavity after Sheldon is only temporary and serves for yolk 

 passing- froni the ovary into the q^^. 



My own observations seem to show an entirely different course. 

 It is true that some of the egg-stalks in niy preparations show 

 a distinct cavity, but this cavity does not communicate with 

 that of the ovary, and, as Sheldon, I found nowhere an e^g in one of 

 them. Probably the stalks are resorbed, when the eggs have become 

 free, and the cavity is only a first indication of degeneration. 



In the neighbourhood of the ovaries however there are a 

 number of eggs, lying free in the body cavity. These eggs (figg. 6 

 and 7) are of the same size and appearance as the attached ones. 

 Only tlieir shape is more variable ; some of them, especially those 

 lying compressed between the organs (ovaries, uteri) or between 

 them and the wall of the body cavity, are more or less fiat- 

 tened, other ones are lying with a flat side against one of these 

 organs or have small pseudopodium-like protuberances. As far as can 

 be concluded from preserved material the facts thus seem to demon- 

 strate, that those free eggs can cliange their form to a certain degree. 



These eggs must have become free from the stalks. One could 

 consider the possibility that this has been artificially produced, 

 f. i. by contractions of the animal when it was killed. This 

 however seems to be contradicted by the facts described below. 



I was more fortunate than Sheldon in finding some eggs (which 

 will be described hereafter), besides a large quantity of sper- 

 matozoa, in the cavity of the ovaries. Of course the few eggs 

 arising endogenous can come into that cavity directly, but those, 

 which are exogenous and afterwards fall into the- body cavity, 

 can reach the lumen only by perforating the wall of the ovary 

 in any manner. Carefully inspecting the preparations I indeed 

 observed some small perforations of the ovarian walls, some of 

 them going through the wliole tliickness of the wall (figg. 1 and 8), 

 others closcd against the body cavity by a very thin membrane, 

 which sometimes consists of a layer of flattened cells, in other 



