124 VERANY AND VOGT ON THE HECTOCOTYLI 



into the muscular tube to communicate with the conical bodies, 

 or if they were merely cutaneous glands. 



We can easily satisfy the doubts of M. Kolliker upon this 

 matter. His so-called intestine is only a central blood-vessel ; 

 the conoid masses seen by him in this " intestine " are the 

 ganglia of the nervous cord situated below the vessel and not 

 within it ; whilst the canals with their fine apertures are only the 

 nerves passing from these ganglia and terminating in the skin. 

 The branchiae described by M. Kolliker are fine fringes com- 

 posed of an epidermis with polygonal cells ; and of a homo- 

 geneous internal membrane, in which a simple network of ca- 

 pillaries uniting into two very small trunks is placed. In 

 the skin of the back are found upon each side two longitudinal 

 vessels, with whose termination M. Kolliker was not acquainted, 

 but which appear to furnish branches for the penis also. Besides 

 these vessels, M. Kolliker found under the microscope, in a 

 fragment of skin with whose exact origin he was not acquainted, 

 an oval tube which he considered to be decidedly a heart, but 

 whose position he could not indicate. The generative organs 

 are very much developed ; they consist of a simple testicle, of 

 an ejaculatory duct, and of a penis. The testicle is a transpa- 

 rent pyriform vesicle, which fills the whole of the abdomen of 

 the Hectocotylus. In the interior of this vesicle there exists 

 coiled up a fine cylindrical thread, without any proper enve- 

 lope, and formed solely by filiform spermatozoa united together. 

 Beside these spermatozoa, granular cells are found in very 

 considerable number. This thread ends freely at its posterior 

 extremity ; but anteriorly it is continued forwards into the effe- 

 rent canal which commences by a clavate extremity, folds back 

 at first in the testicular vesicle, and finally passes into the penis. 

 The efferent canal has a very peculiar structure, for its parietes 

 are very solid, semi-transparent, yellowish, and composed of 

 elastic fibres. The anterior part of the efferent canal is situated 

 in the penis itself, and is traversed in its whole length by a 

 spiral ligament, whose nature M. Kolliker could not determine. 



M. von Siebold describes the posterior extremity of the Hec- 

 tocotyli as a generative sac, in w r hich the seminal mass, with the 

 copulatory organ, and the efferent canal (provided with horny 



