[9] THE EEL QUESTION. 471 



in all eels having an ovarium, Crivelli and Maggi must, according to 

 their own view, declare the eel as a hermaphrodite. Professor Ercolani's 

 essay begins with this assertion, that "the author this day appears 

 before the academy with fear and trembling, since he intends to present 

 something new regarding a question which has been the rock on which 

 the vessels of so many distinguished scientists have foundered." He 

 thereupon points to the famous scientist Vallisneri, whose great mistake 

 had exactly a hundred years ago been shown up by Mondini in this very 

 same academy, when the latter, referring to Vallisneri's joy at his sup- 

 posed discovery, had uttered the following words : " Oh, that the truth 

 had been equal to his joy "! and Ercolani adds that when writing his 

 essay he had often to think of these words. 



We are sorry to say that this feeling of fear and trembling which the 

 highly esteemed Bolognese savant and anatomist manifests in a manner 

 so modest, and at the same time honorable for himself, as well as his 

 reference to Vallisneri's mistake, were entirely justified. The organ of 

 the eel described both by Ercolani and Crivelli and Maggi as the testi- 

 cle, has, on careful examination, been shown in the most unmistakable 

 manner to have not even the slightest trace of a testicle-like construc- 

 tion. The cells of this organ extending alongside of the ovarium are 

 only simple fatty cells having all the distinguishing marks of such cells 

 as given in manuals of histology. 



Professor Rauber,of Leipzig, has carefully examined these cells ; and 

 I have also examined them in a great many eels ; and nothing has ever 

 been discovered in them but fat and the roots of blood-vessels. The 

 supposed spermatozoids depicted in Crivelli's and Maggi's work have 

 under a good microscope been shown to be nothing but small fatty par- 

 ticles or crystalline particles, such as are frequently found in fatty 

 cells.* 



Meanwhile the question regarding the male organs of the eel was to 

 enter upon a new and highly significant stage, bringing it nearer toward 

 its final solution. Darwin has directed attention to the circumstance 

 that the male of nearly all fish is smaller than the female.t He says 

 that Dr. Giinther, the eminent ichthyologist of the London Museum, 

 had assured him that he never yet met with a single instance where the 

 male fish had been larger than the female of the same species. This 

 utterance may possibly have induced Dr. Syrski, formerly director of 

 the Museum of Natural Sciences at Trieste, now professor at the Uni- 

 versity at Lemberg — when commissioned by the authorities of Trieste 

 to ascertain the actual spawning season of all the fish caught near 

 Trieste, which of course would include the eel — to direct his attention 



* In making microscopic examinations of fatty tissues the so-called" Brown's molec- 

 ular movement " may easily deceive the observer and cause him to imagine that be 

 sees moving spermatozoids ; especially will this be tbe case in fish, of whose spermato- 

 zoids — unless they are extraordinarily magnified — only the head can be recognized, 

 and which have an entirely globular shape. 



t Charles Darwin, " The descent of Man," translated by Cams, 1871, vol. ii, p. 5. 



