CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ANATOMY OF BARTHWORMS. 4051 
cells. Dr. Rosa has not, however, quoted my paper in the 
‘Journal of Anatomy’ (6), which deals with the minute 
structure of the ovary of Eudrilus. I have there figured 
structures which seem to me to be only possible of interpreta- 
tion on the view that they are developing ova. If, then, the 
“ovary” of the fourteenth segment of Eudrilus be nothing 
more than a receptaculum, it is anomalous by reason of the 
fact that the ova may undergo there their whole course of de- 
velopment. Nothing of the kind has ever, to my knowledge, 
been described in any other Earthworm; indeed, Teleudrilus 
is the only instance of an Earthworm known to me! in which 
the receptaculum contains anything more than mature, or very 
nearly mature, ova. It is true that Goehlich has recently de- 
scribed bodies in the receptaculum of Lumbricus which bear 
a certain resemblance to germ-cells ; but he is inclined to doubt 
their identity with such. Nevertheless, an analogy with the 
male organs might be regarded as an argument on Rosa’s 
side. 
The passage of the ova from the gonad into the recep- 
taculum in Teleudrilus is of course rendered possible by 
the coelomic sac which connects the two, though why they 
should not be drawn in passing into the open mouth of the 
oviduct is not easy to understand ; in other Earthworms, such 
as, for example, Lumbricus, it is very difficult to see why the 
ova should get into the receptaculum instead of all finding 
their way to the exterior through the oviduct. In Eudrilus 
it is still more difficult to understand how this is carried out, 
if the organ of the fourteenth segment, which I regard as 
the ovary, be really a receptaculum to which the developing 
germ-cells are transferred. In the first place, as I have already 
pointed out, mature and immature ova are found in both the 
ovary and the supposed receptaculum ; but, leaving this aside 
for the present, it does not seem possible that the ova could 
be conveyed directly, as they must be in Lumbricus, from 
the ovary which is enclosed in a muscular sac to the recep- 
1 Except in the Pericheta described for the first time in the present 
paper (p. 471). 
