336 Miscellaneous. 
other of female polypes. The impregnation of the females is effected 
through the intervention of the water. Male polypes are seen to 
send forth small jets of a white liquid, which forms clouds in the 
water, and contains the male elements. 
The seminal and ovigerous capsules are not easily distinguished 
with a lens; but the microscope shows in the ova the germinal spot 
and vesicle and the granulations of the vitellus, and in the seminal 
capsules the spermatozoids and the cells which produce them. The 
ova and testes are milk-white—the former opake, the latter slightly 
transparent. After death, the testes remain white, whilst the ova 
become yellowish ; they are then easily distinguished. 
It is at the base of the intestiniform folds and, beneath these, in 
the delicate membrane which unites them to the wall of the body, 
that the genital glands are placed. During development, they pro- 
ject out of the plates, and appear to be attached by long and slender 
pedicels, by the rupture of which they are separated and fall into the 
general cavity. In this cavity both the transformation of the egg 
after fecundation, and digestion, are accomplished ; so that the same 
cavity serves at once as a stomach and as an incubatory pouch. 
The observation of the development of the ovum was attended 
with great difficulties ; and it was only after passing some time on 
board a fishing-boat that the author succeeded in tracing it. The 
ovum, originally naked and spherical, becomes elongated and covered 
with vibratile cilia. A cavity is then formed in it, which opens 
externally and finally becomes the mouth. It then acquires the form 
of a little white worm, and is very active, swimming in all directions, 
avoiding its comrades when they meet, and rising and descending in 
the vessels, with the extremity opposite to the mouth always fore- 
most.—Comptes Rendus, Jan. 13, 1862, p. 116. 
On the Polar Globules of the Ovum, and the mode of their Produc- 
tion, and on the Production of the Blastodermic Cells without 
segmentation of the Vitellus in some Articulata. By Cuarixs 
Rosin. 
Since Dumortier, most embryologists have indicated under the 
names of mucous, oily, or transparent globule, hyaline corpuscle, &c. 
a translucent globule which appears on the sides of the embryo. 
When once produced, it remains under the vitellime membrane, 
taking no part in the phenomena going on beside it; and it is left 
behind with the envelope on the hatching of the young animal. Its 
production paves the way for the segmentation of the vitellus, and 
consequently for the generation of the cells of the blastoderm. 
The point of the surface of the vitellus on which these globules 
are produced marks, a few hours beforehand, the pole of the vitellus 
which is about to become depressed and then to form a dividing 
furrow which by degrees becomes equatorial; hence the name of * 
polar globules given to them. This is also the point where the 
cephalic extremity will afterwards appear, and it indicates the spot 
at which segmentation will commence. 
