Mr. W. Clark on the Animal of Dentalium Tarentinum. 327 
it is not however placed, as in them, immediately at the anterior 
orifice of a pharyngeal cesophagus leading to a stomach and 
fixed thereto by strong elastic threads, but it is the stomach 
itself most slightly attached to the membrane which envelopes 
it. This powerful machine undoubtedly acts as a gizzard to 
grind the testaceous food of this animal; it empties itself by 
a very short scoop-shaped canal into an intestine of three or 
four intricate gordian knot-like folds, which, strange to say, 
often contain a dozen or more shells that have escaped the 
action of the gizzard; the intestine does not entwine with the 
liver, but is inclosed within the same cavity as the gizzard; it 
pierces its inclosure on the right side, passes through the liver, 
and discharges the rejectamenta at the base of the branchial ca- 
vity under the mantle about the middle of the shell, from whence 
they are passed by the deep groove of the foot, which the animal 
can by the compression of its sides make canaliferous, as far as 
the middle section of the foot, around which, when the animals 
are fresh from the sea, they form repeated collars of mucus, 
which in a short time, from frequent aggregations of matter, 
become ponderous, break and fall off, and when examined are 
found to be composed of the spoil of shells: this circumstance, 
independent of all others, shows that the feeces are not discharged 
posteriorly. 
The liver is an extremely scanty light yellowish green organ 
placed under the stomach, and is continued under the branchial 
cavity, and then joins the ovarium, with which it becomes almost 
imperceptibly amalgamated throughout its whole length. The 
ovarium is very long and large, and fills up the whole of the poste- 
rior part of the body from the branchiz ; it consists of from four 
to six longitudinal rows of distinct granular yellowish white 
masses of ova, with scanty interweavings of the liver, which ex- 
hibit three stages of development ; the more forward ones become 
broken into six portions, and when ready for exclusion these 
again break into perfectly round, pale brown globules ; all these 
phases vary in different animals according to the advancement 
of fecundation. The oviduct is in the centre of the longitudinal 
rows of ova formed by their junction, and the ova are undoubt- 
edly discharged by the posterior spoon-shaped process, from 
whence I have seen volleys of fifty or a hundred ejected with 
considerable force in minute round pomts: these must not be 
mistaken for fecal pellets, neither must the oviduct be con- 
founded with the branchial canal, which is the cavity formed 
between the mantle and the membrane of the ovar:um. The ho- 
mogeneity of the masses of this part of the body m many con- 
ditions, especially when fecundation is not far advanced, renders 
the discrimination of organs of this character a matter of some 
difficulty. I have not discovered any exserted organs of repro- 
