154 Miscellaneous, 



year's brood may be destroyed. On the other hand, if the larvae be 

 allowed to be scattered over the fields or barn-yard, a plentiful supply 

 of "weevils" for the next crop is secured. This method was pro- 

 posed several years since by Prof. Henslow, but I have not been able 

 to ascertain whether it has been used extensively in America. — Pro- 

 ceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences ofPhiladelphia, vol. iv. 

 p. 210. 



On the Characters and Intimate Structure of the Odoriferous Glands 

 of the hwertehrata. By Dr. Leidy. 



Nature has supplied most or all animals with some means of de- 

 fence or protection, through which their destruction is rendered 

 limited. The character of such means varies exceedingly : some are 

 encased in hard armour ; some are endowed with great muscular 

 strength, some with great rapidity of movement ; others trust to their 

 minuteness, some to their colour ; others feign death ; many are fur- 

 nished with formidable instruments, such as teeth, claws, aculei, &c. ; 

 others are supplied with organs which emit an odour so offensive that 

 an aggressor is frequently compelled to leave what otherwise would 

 have been its victim, &c. It is to the last-mentioned organs to 

 which I at present wish to direct, for a few moments, the attention 

 of the members; to the organs denominated odoriferous glands of 

 animals. Bodies of this, or of a homologous character, are possessed 

 by nearly all animals, but they are not in all used as a means of 

 defence. They give origin to the odour which appears to be more 

 or less peculiar to each species of animal, and which probably is in 

 some way connected with the sexual instinct. The scent-bag of the 

 Moschus moschiferus is the homologue of the glandulae odoriferae 

 Tysoni of the human prepuce ; the tegumentary mucous glands of 

 moUusca, of annelides, of fishes, the tegumentary glands of reptiles, 

 the perspiratory and sebaceous glands of birds, and of mammals, the 

 odoriferous glands of insects, the anal sacs of carnivora, &c., are all 

 probably of a homologous character. 



Although varying in the degree of their complexity in different 

 animals, and in the character of their secretion, yet the essential 

 structure is the same throughout. Consisting of tubes or follicles 

 of basement membrane, their complexity depends upon their greater 

 or lesser length, their being simple or compound, straight or more or 

 less convoluted, and isolated or aggregated, in connection with the 

 mode of supplying to them their nutritive fluid. 



On the interior these cavities or tubes are covered with a single 

 layer of nucleolo-nucleated organic cells, the true elaborators or 

 manufacturers of the secreted matters of the glandular bodies. 



The secreted matter varies exceedingly in its properties in different 

 animals ; in odour being found from that of the persi)iratory fluid of 

 man, through a great variety of shades, to that most powerful and 

 odious of all odoiu's, the secretion of the anal glands of the Mephitis 

 Americana ; in consistence from a semi-fluid state to the gaseous 

 fluid of the Brachinus crepitansy &c. It is this which constitutes 



