^1^ 



THE KANSAS UNIVERSITY 

 SCIENCE BULLETIN. 



Vol. V, No. 19.] MARCH, 1910. [^oTxVn"'. 



OBSERVATIONS ON THE GRYLLID^ : IV. 

 COPULATION. 



BY W. J. BAUMGARTNER. 



(Contribution from the Zoiilogical Laboratory, No. 196.) 



Plate LXIV. 



Historical Note. 

 '' |"^HE first suggestion of the correct method of the transfer 

 1 of the spermatozoa from the male to the female in the 

 Gryllidse is given by Siebold (20), who described the 

 glands annexed to the ejaculatory duct and noted that their 

 secretion coagulated very readily when exposed to the air, and 

 that it probably served to fill and distend the copulatory pouch 

 just as it filled and distended the penis. The latter organ sur- 

 rounded a portion of the sperm and thus formed the spermato- 

 phore. Siebold believed with the older naturalists that the 

 spermatophore is the end of the penis broken off and often re- 

 formed. 



Stein (22) by his careful investigations gave the correct idea 

 of the spermatophore as a vesicle formed by the secretion of 

 the annexed glands and used to carry the sperm. Siebold 

 (21) accepted this correction and later defended it. But he 

 studied mostly locustids, and so we do not know that this part 

 of his notes concerned the gryllids ; however, some of his work 

 was done on Gryllus, and so the work must be mentioned in a 

 review of the subject. 



We do have a comparatively detailed description of the act 

 or acts of copulation in the crickets as early as 1855 by a 

 Frenchman, M. Charles Lespes (11). But the work was little 

 known and then questioned by Milne-Edwards (15) ; so that 



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