432 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



VOL. 39. 



testes. On each side the duct full of secretion and its central sperm 

 core is differently bent. Apparently the sperm mass is long enough 

 to supply spermatophores to two or three females. 



The projecting mass shows plainly a central core, fig. 14, and this 

 continues up through the leg. When the projecting mass is cut 

 into sections it is found that it has the same structure as it has within 

 the leg, as indicated in fig. 15. Here the rounded mass is a secretion 

 filling the deferent duct completely. The protuberant mass is only 



the secretion emerging from 

 the deferent duct in which it 

 is made about the central 

 core of sjierm. 



In this section the shell of 

 the basal segment of the leg 

 is lined by epidermis and 

 connective tissue surround- 

 ing the large muscles and the 

 deferent duct. This duct has 

 a thick muscular wall lined 

 by epithelium and full of a 

 clear secretion which in the 

 preparations is shrunken so 

 as to show conchoidal frac- 

 tures. The central part of 

 the contents of the duct is a 

 rod of sperm exactly as in 

 the spermatophore mass on 

 the body of the female, but 

 the sperm shows fewer pro- 

 toplasmic processes. 



The secretion inclosing the 

 sperm seems not to have 

 clotted more firmly about 

 the sperm nor the walls of 

 the duct than elsewhere, but 

 otherwise the mass is like 

 that of the spermatophore 

 on the female. 



That these projecting masses are the spermatophores fixed in process 

 of emergence from the deferent ducts and about to be transferred to 

 the female to form the united pair of spermatophores found upon the 

 sternal surface of the female seems most evident. The occurrence 

 of a minute mass of sperm in a minute string of secretion lying 

 among the hairs on the base of the leg, fig. 14, near the orifice of the 

 sperm duct suggests that the emerging mass may have portions of its 



Fig. 14.— Sxtrface view of base of last thoracic leg of 

 male polycheles sculptus showing below the de- 

 ferent duct and contained sperm cut across and 

 above the large dark spermatophore emerging 

 from the orifice. 



