24 



normal spermatozoa, as also the process of spermatogenesis ; my in- 

 vestigations have led me to no such surprising conclusion, as will sub- 

 sequently be seen, though the testis and spermatogenesis of Myxine is 

 in several respect very remarkable.« In the report of his own obser- 

 vations he writes: »There can thus be no doubt that that portion of 

 the generative organ is a real male organ; it is indeed strange that 

 Cunningham has so little succeeded in finding spermatozoa.« 

 Finally at the conclusion of his own description of the spermatogenesis 

 he says : »As mentioned before, there is, so far as my experience goes, 

 nothing in the spermatogenesis of Myxine which serves to indicate a 

 development of the spermatozoa like what is supposed by Mr. Cun- 

 ningham; that which he has seen in his preparation I cannot di- 

 stinguish; is it possible that it is spermatozoa which have been arti- 

 ficially changed?« 



The latter suggestion I may remark is not probable, for I described 

 the spermatozoa in the fresh condition. 



It seems from the above quotations that Dr. Nansen made the 

 extraordinary mistake of believing that I had never seen the real sper- 

 matozoa of Myxine at all, that he saw them for the first time, and that 

 therefore much of the credit of discovering the hermaphroditism be- 

 longed to him. 



Dr. Nans en's paper is written in English and I have quoted his 

 very words. But no separate copy of the paper was ever sent to me, 

 and until recently I know its contents only from (a) a summary in the 

 Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society 1889, p. 188, and (b) a 

 French translation of the paper published in Prof. Giard's Bulletin 

 Scientifique de la France et de la Belgique, III. Sér. IL Vol. 1889, 

 p. 315. In the former and in an editorial foot-note to the latter, the 

 discovery of the protandrous hermaphroditism of Myxme is attributed 

 to Dr. Nansen, and the editors of these two journals are responsible, 

 even more than Dr. Nansen himself, for having temporarily misled 

 the majority of zoologists into supposing that the intrepid explorer of 

 Greenland was also the discoverer of the curious sexual relations of 

 Myxine. 



In order to decide the questions at issue between Dr. Nansen 

 and myself as to the spermatogenesis in the hermaphrodite reproduc- 

 tive organ of Myxine I visited Norway during the past summer and 

 spent some weeks in Bergen and at Alverströmmen, 20 miles north of 

 that city, where Dr. Nansen carried on bis researches. I was enabled 

 to undertake this journey by the aid of a grant from the state-fund 

 administered by the Royal Society, and appliances and facilities for my 

 work were placed freely at my disposal by the Director and staff of the 



