EIGHTEENTH LECTURE. 



THE MALE GENERATIVE GLANDS, THE TESTICLES WITH 

 THE EFFERENT APPARATUS. 



THE seminal gland or testicle represents in the male organ- 

 ism that which the ovary does in the female body. We leave 

 its coarser structure, for the greater part, to descriptive 

 anatomy. 



A firm connective-tissue envelope, called the albuginea, 

 invests our organ. Numerous and incomplete septa radiate 

 from it into the interior, where they finally unite above into 

 a thickened wedge-shaped mass, the corpus Highmori. The 

 interior is thereby divided into conical lobules whose apices 

 are turned towards the corpus Highmori. 



A testicle-lobule consists of an aggregation of uncommonly 

 long convoluted canals or tubes. They present divisions and 

 communications, and finally pass over into each other in the 

 form of a loop, but never terminate in a cul-de-sac (Mihal- 

 kovics). These tubules are called seminiferous canals. 



At the apex of the lobule, the seminiferous canal becomes 

 united into a straight excretory duct (tubulus rectus) which, 

 passing into the corpus Highmori, unites with others in a 

 reticular manner and forms a further tubular system, the rete 

 testis. From the latter continue nine to seventeen larger 

 canals, the so-called vascula efferentia. They at first pursue 

 a direct course, and thus perforate the albuginea ; then, 

 becoming narrow, they form with numerous convolutions 

 several conical lobes, the so-called coni vasculosi ; the latter 

 form the caput epididymis. The terminal canals gradually 

 come together into a single one 0.3767 to 0.45 mm. in 

 diameter. It forms, with numerous convolutions, the cauda 

 epididymis. 



