214 WILLIAM BLAXLAND BENHAM. 
I. Historica. 
Amongst the earliest papers dealing with Earthworms ana- 
tomically are those of Savigny (1) in 1820, and of Dugés (2) in 
1828, who describe numerous species of Lumbricus, which will 
be mentioned in Section II. Dugés figures the prostomium of 
some of these, and describes the genital organs ; but his inter- 
pretation of the latter is wrong, since he has, like so many 
of the earlier writers, confused the seminal reservoirs and 
the spermathece, attributing each to the wrong sex. Other 
authors followed him, who, whilst contradicting him, were no 
nearer the truth. Von Siebold (3), for instance, suggested 
that the ovary was invaginated into the seminal reservoirs. 
Even till quite recently the ‘“ seminal reservoirs” were spoken 
of as “testes.” I may at once say that I shall use the former 
name for the three pairs of large white organs in Lumbricus 
which originate in somites x and x1 and spread into the neigh- 
‘bouring somites, and for their homologues in other genera. 
The ovary was unknown till 1853, when d’Udekem (4) 
described itin Lumbricus agricola; whilst in 1856 Hering 
(5) supplemented our knowledge of the genital organs by his 
figure of the ovary and his description of its position on the 
posterior face of the septum between somites x11 and x11. He 
also showed that the oviduct was not in continuity with the 
ovary, but that the ova fell into the body cavity, and were 
conveyed thence to the exterior by the wide ciliated funnels of 
the pair of short oviducts which pass through the posterior 
septum of somite x111 to the exterior in x1v. Hering described 
the process of copulation, and thought that the spermatozoa 
passed from the sperm pore along a groove of the ventral sur- 
face to the spermathece ; but Dr. Fraisse, in 1882 (6), describes 
the spermatophores of various spcies of Lumbricus, and shows 
that the spermatozoa do not pass directly into the spermathece, 
but are received in bodies secreted on somite xxvi. Previous 
authors had described as “ testes” the large white sacs which 
are now known as “seminal reservoirs,” but Hering, in this 
paper, describes and figures the true testes. Professor A. G. 
