73 Prof. J. Van der Hoeven on the Anatomy 



openbarsten " — white and delicate tubes which moved in water 

 and burst open* , and which Needham investigated more closely 

 in Loliffo, whence they afterwards obtained the name of corpora 

 Needhamiana. I always found in the bladder under the hood, 

 described above, a single spermophore alone, and have no reason 

 to conclude that it may contain two of them. This spermophore 

 is of an extraordinary length, and lies in the bladder rolled up 

 in many convolutions, just as the spermophores are already 

 convoluted in the vesicula seminalis. I succeeded in unrolling 

 one of them, but not without some pieces breaking off, and thus 

 I can estimate the length at full 27 centimeters. Dr. Bogaard 

 estimates the length of another spermophore, measured by him, 

 at 34 centimeters. This remarkable length is not altogether 

 without example in other Cephalopods : Milne-Edwards found 

 the spermophores in Octopus vulgains 8 centimeters longf, and 

 R. Leuckart found in Octopus Caren<2 the spermophore 3 feet 

 long (Zoologische Untersuchungen, Drittes Heft, Giessen 1854, 

 4to, s. 98. not. 2). The spermophore of the Nautilus is a round 

 tube, not everywhere of the same thickness ; it is on an average 

 1 mm., and becomes fine at the two extremities. The smaller 

 end presents a small bending back at an acute angle j this thin 

 recurved part is about 3 mm. long. The point, finally, presented 

 in one specimen a microscopic appendage in addition, which 

 seemed to be split into two slips and left the before-named thin 

 part at a right angle. 



The colour of the spermophore, when it has left the penis, is 

 brown-yellow. Within its cavity there lies a ribbon-shaped 

 filament of about -^-^ mm. in breadth, which is visible to the 

 naked eye. This filament is flat and bent spirally in close 

 circles, like the spiral thread in the air-tubes of insects. It 

 consists in great part of spermatozoids which are attached by 

 their ca])illiform extremities to the structureless thread situated 

 in the middle J. For other particulars I refer my readers to the 

 careful investigations of Dr. Bogaard appended to this memoir, 

 and put aside my own observations, which were not complete, 

 rather than by a difference of conception give occasion, perhaps, 

 in the reader, to uncertain and confused notions. 



The structure of the corpora Needhamiana in the Cuttle-fish 

 {Sepia officinalis) has been described exactly by C. G. Carus, 

 who, however, has drawn up his description under the im- 

 pression of a mistaken idea, that he had an animal existence 



* Biblia Naturae, p. 896. 



t Ann. (les Sc. Nat., 2 serie, torn, xviii. 1842, Zool. p. 339. pi. 14.fig. 1. 



X What I formerly described as flat, elongate-oval, microscopic bodies, 

 hanging by the filament (Tijdschr. van de Eerste Kl. van het Kouinkl. 

 Instituut, i. bl. 72), I now regard as tissue detached from the spiral 

 filament. 



