428 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. vol.39. 



some individuals with structures in tliis region that may have been 

 mistaken for receptacles, though they are really only large sperma- 

 tophores. Thus in Polyclieles suJimi the depressed smooth shell 

 between the fourth and fifth legs has fastened firmly to it a yellow 

 brown flat mass which looks like two flattened tubes side by side. 

 Each has a small opening near the anterior tip. They are fused into 

 a common mass posteriorly and expanded laterally to make the 

 entire outline rather triangular. This mass is really two sperma- 

 tophores. The first pleopods of the female are here markedly differ- 

 entiated as flat setose brushes which would seem well made to glide 

 over the surface to which the spermatophores are attached and to 

 keep it clean before they were attached. That the above masses are 

 spermatophores is supported by the fact that in the males there is 

 in some cases a similar dark brown mass, of flat form projecting far 

 out of the opening of the deferent duct on the base of each fifth leg, 

 like a hardened secretion which was in process of emergence to be 

 transferred to the female to form the above spermatophoral mass. 



In the males of Polyclieles granulatus, P. agassizii, P. sculptus, and 

 P. sculptus pacificus Faxon there are, in some specimens, similar 

 colored projections from the male orifices. That these masses could 

 be transferred from the male to the female seemed evident from 

 applying the two sexes together when the projecting secretions of the 

 male could be brought to the long, spoon-shaped male pleopods in 

 such a way as to make it plausible that these spoons serve somewhat 

 as do the homologous pleopods of the crayfish to conduct the sperm, 

 or the spermatophores, from the male to the female. 



The demonstration of the spermatophore nature of the masses 

 found upon the female is, however, to be found in the following 

 description of their structure and probable male origin as seen in 

 specimens of Polyclieles sculptus, 



A female from Albatross station 2394, Gulf of Mexico, in 420 fath- 

 oms, has between the fourth and fifth legs, as represented in fig. 11 , a 

 large triangular or trefoil-shaped mass which proves to be not a 

 spermatheca or female receptive organ, but a pair of fused sperma- 

 tophores, or pui'ely male products, applied to the outside of the 

 shell of the female. While the female is 95 mm. long with claws 

 120 mm. long, the spermatophore mass is 9 mm. long and wide, 

 with a maximum diagonal length of 10 mm., so that it takes up quite 

 a portion of the sternal surface of the thorax, which is but 33 mm. 

 wide. 



This flat mass is somewhat irregular on the surface and its anterior 

 half bends up at a wide angle with the posterior, since it is applied 

 closely to the shell which is curved between the fourth and fifth 

 legs. It is made up of a translucent yellow brown material through 

 which a curved whitish content can be seen dimly on each side pass- 



