10 



THE ANATOMY AND DEVELOPMENT OF PERIPATUS NOVAE-BRITANNIAE. 



Ovary. The ovary lies primitively dorsally and is attached to the floor of the 

 pericardium approximately in the region of the 21st and 22nd pairs of legs. It appears 

 however from at least one of my dissections either that the floor of the pericardium is 

 capable of being much stretched or that the attachment of the ovary can be drawn out 

 as a ligament, because in the first adult female opened by me, a drawing of which is 

 reproduced in Fig. 12. I had at first some difficulty in finding the ovary, as it was 

 almost completely concealed to the right and below the convexity of the descending 

 portion of the left uterus. By turning the latter aside, the two whitish, closely approxi- 

 mated receptacula seminis came into view. In this example the ovary was coherent with 

 the uterine wall, and a portion of the latter had to be removed and mounted together 

 with the ovary. 



The ovary consists of two hollow tubes with thin, folded walls, provided with follicular 

 outgrowths which project into the body-cavity (haemocoel) (Fig. 16). The two cavities 

 end blindly at one end and are separated from one another by a thin septum except 

 near the opposite end, where the cavities unite into a common chamber. The latter 

 communicates by a single aperture with the oviducts which immediately divaricate 

 (Fig. 17). From my preparations it appears that sometimes the oviducts communicate 

 with the ovary at or near its posterior end and sometimes near its anterior end. In 

 Fig. 16 the erect portion of the ovary which enters into connection with the oviducts 

 is obviously posterior. That portion of each oviduct which lies between the ovary 

 and the receptaculum seminis differs in the character of its walls from the rest of 

 the genital duct. The lumen is narrow and the epithelium columnar. In surface view 

 the cells seem to interlace with one another. It requires a special name and I shall 

 call it the infundibulum. 



Thus the thick-walled infundibula stand in essentially the same relation to the 

 ovarian chambers as the thick-walled funnel of a nephridium does to its thin-walled end-sac. 



The contrast between the infundibula or oviducal tubes and the ovarian tubes 

 which is so striking in P. novae-britanniae does not seem to be exhibited in the 



Fig. 2. Horizontal section through the ovarial tubes of P. edwardsii. [After Gaffron.] 

 1. Peritoneum traversed by tracheae. 3. Germinal epithelium. 



■2. Tunica muscularis. 4. Tunica propria. 



Neotropical species and has not been remarked upon in the Cape species. In the 

 character of its ovary the Neotropical Peripatus differs fundamentally both from the 



