No. 3.] SPERM ATOPHORES. 397 



ablest and latest writer (M. Claparede) on the animals which present 

 them ; and that they exhibit marked variations in form in the various 

 genera and species of Oligochoet worms." 



"Did we know of a number of free unicellular organisms after com- 

 plete development becoming fixed together by a cement to form a 

 secondary organism capable of locomotion and possibly of nutrition, we 

 should have a parallel to the spermatophores ; as it is, they are, I be- 

 lieve, the only examples of the building up of an organ or quasi-organ- 

 ism by agglomeration instead of histogenesis." 



" The sperm-ropes of Tubifex rivulorum I have found in the copula- 

 tory pouches both in summer and winter, but especially abundant and 

 well formed in the winter. They have a worm-like figure, with a curious 

 conical head, an average from -^V to ^3- of an inch in length, and from 

 ^^ to 2W of ^^ "^^^ "^ breadth, the narrowest part being that imme- 

 diately succeeding the conical head, which has a breadth of about y^Vo" 

 of an inch." 



" The general form of the sperm-rope is due to its being moulded in 

 the long neck of the copulatory pouch. . . . 



" It appears that the material of which the sperm-ropes are formed, 

 namely, spermatozoa and a cementing matrix, must be introduced in a 

 viscid form from the male efferent duct, through the penis of one worm 

 into the copulatory reservoir of another, and in the neck of that reser- 

 voir a * setting ' occurs ; for the sperm-ropes, when fully formed, are 

 very firm and compact bodies, of high light-breaking power. The wall 

 of the copulatory pouch is glandular, and undoubtedly furnishes a 

 secretion which occupies part of its cavity, and in all probability also 

 assists as a cementing material in the formation of the sperm-ropes." 



b. The Lumbricid^. — The account given by Vejdovskyi of 

 the spermatophores of the Lumbricidae comes more closely in 

 several respects to what I have seen in the leeches. It is in 

 these worms that spermatophores have often been seen attached 

 to the surface of the body, usually on the first segments of the 

 sexual girdle. According to Vejdovsky, they were known to 

 the earlier naturalists of this century, and were usually described, 

 after Morren's example, as '' appcndiailce generatrices,'' or as 

 '' penes r Friedrich Muller (1849) first recognized them as sper- 

 matophores. Later (1857), however, they are referred to by 

 Ewald Hering as " unimportant formations." Hering's descrip- 

 tion (Zeitschr. f. w. Zool., IV, 1857), nevertheless, seems to be 

 of some value : — 



1 System und Morphologic der OligochcEten, Prag., 1884. 



