Coe and Kunkel— California Limbless Lizard. 375 
The ostium leads into a narrow, much convoluted tube which 
passes backward on the lateral face of the ovary. If there are no eggs 
or embryos in the oviduct this tube retains an almost uniform diameter 
throughout its whole length. It opens posteriorly at the summit of 
a small papilla (pl. xv, fig. 34, y.p) situated on the ventral wall of 
the dorsal cloacal chamber, as described below. When eggs or 
embryos are present, however, the oviduct swells out to form a broad 
uterine sac in the region occupied by them. 
The exact shape and size of the egg in life has not been carefully 
noted, the drawing on plate xii having been made from a specimen 
after preservation. In this specimen (fig. 26), and in several others 
similar, the two eggs occupied almost the whole length of the uterus 
between the ovary and the anterior end of the kidney. The eggs 
were separated from each other by a marked constriction in the uter- 
ine wall, and the wall was similarly sharply constricted both in front 
of the eggs and behind them. Each of these eggs was long and 
elliptical, but was decidedly narrower in the middle than toward the 
ends. 
Left oviduct.—As stated above, the left oviduct remains through 
life in a very rudimentary condition and even atrophies to such an 
extent that it reaches in adult females a length scarcely exceeding 
that of the kidney, as shown in figs. 25, 26, pl. xin. The average 
length is about 20™™, but varies widely in different individuals even 
when sexually mature. In a single specimen the length was 40™™, 
and in another equally large specimen it was but 15™". These were 
the limits of variation, but these extremes are much greater than is 
the case of any other organ. This condition would indicate a very 
recent degeneration of this functionless oviduct. 
A consideration of the condition of the oviducts in Anguis and 
other reptiles further emphasizes the fact that we have in this organ 
in Anniella a much more advanced stage of degeneration than occurs 
in any other reptile, while the degeneration is along the same lines as 
in the large number of reptiles in which the left oviduct presents 
various degrees of diminution in size as compared with the right. 
Lacerta and most other lizards have the left oviduct more or less 
conspicuously shorter and smaller than the right, corresponding with 
the different position of the two ovaries. 
This aborted oviduct is slender and cylindrical, and is of about the 
same diameter throughout. At its anterior end, however, it usually 
bends on itself sharply and either ends abruptly (pl. xii, fig. 25) or 
extends for a millimeter or two farther as a very narrow tube with 
