820 CLASS IIL. 
wanting in Octopus, are present in females, without any connexion 
with the oviduct, and probably secrete an external covering, or an 
adhesive substance, by which the eggs are attached to each other. 
The festis in the male agrees for the most part with the ovary in 
external form and in situation. It presents a sac in which a bundle 
of glandular tubes that secrete the seed is found. The efferent duct 
is narrow and very tortuous, and afterwards passes into a wider 
canal with internal folds, into which also an elongated gland 
(prostata ?) situated laterally effuses its secretion. This canal termi- 
nates in a muscular purse with thin walls, in which lie whitish cy- 
lindrical bodies, about half an inch, and sometimes much more in 
length, and which move when they are moistened long after the 
death of the animal: which motion NerpuHam has fully described’. 
NEEDHAM compares these singular little machines, as he names the 
organs, with the Spermatozoa of other animals, from which however they 
differ in their size and their composite structure. This is not exactly the 
same in the various genera, yet it agrees in the chief point that in the 
cylindrical body an elongated sac with thin walls and filled with a white 
fluid (sperma) is situated, and extends to one of its extremities, whilst at 
the other end there is a filament, turned spirally, and contained in a long 
thin tube, which, after a pear-shaped expansion, is attached by a short 
pedicle to the elongated sac at the other extremity. On contact with water 
the cylindrical body is opened, probably by endosmose, and this occasions 
the expulsion of the spiral organ which draws out with it the attached sac. 
Within the sac is contained a white sperma with cylindrical spermatozoa 
terminating in a long fine filament. The Needhamian bodies are thus not 
spermatozoa, but they contain spermatozoa; they are seed-machines, capsule 
seminis or spermatophores, as MILNE EDWARDS has named them?. 
The male Cephalopods have a short, very thick, conical and per- 
forate penis, which is situated at the side of the rectum at the same 
part where the extremity of the oviduct lies in the females attached 
1 Nouvelles découvertes faites avec le Microscope, par 'T. NEEDHAM, traduites de 
VAnglois. Leide, 1747, 8vo, pp. 44—67. London, 1745. Hence, also, these organs 
are named Needhamian bodies, although they had been previously observed by 
SWAMMERDAM (Bibel der Nat. Tab. Lu. figs. 6, 7). Some regard these little cylinders 
as real animals; see G. C. Carus Necdhaiia expulsoria sepie officinalis, beschreiben 
und abgebildet; Nov. Act. Acad. Ces. Leop. Carol. Xx1x. Pl. 1. 1839. 
2 Compare A. Kroun, Frorter’s Neue Notizen, xu. Bd. § 17—23, October, 1839, 
Parr in MuELLER’S Archiv, 1839, § 310—312, Taf. xv.; PrreErs ibid. § 98—100, 
and Mitne Epwarps Ann. des Sc. natur., 2e Série, xvi1t. 1842, pp. 32I—347, with 
many figures. In a well-preserved specimen of a male Nautilus I found the whole 
bursa Needhami (vesicula seminalis) filled by a single cylindrical, long, and tortuous 
canal, within which was a fine spiral filament. 
