No. 2.] THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEWT 275 



spermatozoa. If I understand Stieda correctly he does not re- 

 gard the receptacuhmi of the female as corresponding to any 

 of the glandular structures so strongly developed in the male. 

 A direct homology of the receptaculum with the pelvic gland 

 of the male has, however, been affirmed without hesitation by 

 Blanchard whose opinion I have quoted elsewhere ('9l), and 

 of whose work Stieda seems to have been ignorant. As re- 

 gards Dieviyctylus, the male pelvic gland certainly seems to 

 occupy a position precisely equivalent to that of the recepta- 

 culum, but it is clearly futile to pronounce upon the absolute 

 homology of the two structures without some study of their 

 development, and this I have not made. The question is prob- 

 ably a barren one. 



Fischer {'9i) has recently discovered the receptaculum in 

 Geotriton, and, like Blanchard, homologizes it with the pelvic 

 gland of the male, " da es namlich die entsprechende Lage 

 einnimmt." The receptaculum in Gcotriton, according to 

 Fischer, is unpaired. The tubules of the individuals that he 

 examined contained no spermatozoa.^ 



Egg-laying, etc. — Females that have been kept in confine- 

 ment all winter are not so apt to lay eggs in the spring as are 

 individuals freshly captured. In some few cases I have ob- 

 tained eggs from females kept in my aquaria during the winter, 

 but, as a rule, only females taken during the spring months can 

 be relied upon to furnish eggs in any number. Egg-laying 

 begins about the loth April and is brisk until the first of 

 June, then slowly falls off, and practically ceases by the first of 

 July. It is probable that for a single individual the egg-laying 

 season lasts for at least seven or eight weeks. The lono-est 

 time over which I have actually observed the laying of a single 



1 Fischer has drawn a curious conclusion from the presence of the receptaculum: 

 "Wenn man sich noch einen Augenblick die Lage des receptaculums vor Auge 

 halt, wie es gegeniiber den Oviducten liegt, wie hier der Samen jeden Augenblick 

 bereit steht, um zur richtigen Zeit in den Uterus zu gelangen, so ist wohl richtig, 

 was oben schon als wahrscheinlich bezeichnet wurde, dass der Geotriton fuscus 

 zu lebendig gebarenden Amphibien gerechnet werden muss." (Fischer ('91), 

 p. 24.) It is not at first glance apparent how the presence of a receptaculum 

 renders any greater the probability that Geotriton produces living young ! A re- 

 ceptaculum exists in many egg-laying amphibia — to say nothing of other animals 

 — and its presence or absence is not correlated in any way with viviparity. 



