LAWSON, ON HELIX ASFERSA AND HORTENSIS. 371 



and isolated in the lobules of the ovary, they could not have 

 proceeded from the latter ; for had they been there secreted, 

 they would have been observed in process of development 

 in the ovary, and fully formed and unconnected in the 

 spermatheca. 



RESPECTING THE TESTIS. 



(a) As there is but one gland in connexion with the vas 

 deferens, and that so extensive as to rival the ovary in size 

 and structure, we may fairly conclude that, if a testis exists 

 at all, it is most probably its representative. It seems to me 

 very unreasonable to term this gland, as Van Beneden has 

 done, dL prostate ; such a mode of applying names to parts is 

 more to be deprecated than the barbarous terminology of 

 human anatomists, who not unfrequently call an interesting 

 and peculiar structure innominata, when, to quote the lan- 

 guage of a well-known author, '^ their little puddle of inven- 

 tion has been used dry.^^ I cannot conceive what resemblance 

 it is supposed to bear to an appendage found in another sub- 

 kingdom, and whose function is so much unknown that of 

 two of the most distinguished physiologists of the day one 

 thinks it little more than a mass of muscles, — the other that, 

 most probably, it is the part in the male homologous with, or 

 representing, the uterus of the female. 



(b) The generative organs of the Nudibranchiata, which 

 have been so exquisitely delineated by Messrs. Alder and 

 Handcock, bear, on the whole, so great an analogy to those of 

 the Pulmonifera, that it is very likely, as the sperm and germ- 

 producing organs are isolated in the former, so are they in 

 the latter. The vas deferens in Helix, with its continuation, 

 the testis, which is attached to the border of the uterus, 

 holds the place of the greatly elongate corresponding vessel 

 in Eolis, there being, however, less distinction or separation 

 of parts. 



