324 KANSAS UNIVERSITY SCIENCE BULLETIN. 



textbooks of to-day still disregard it, or quote it with a ques- 

 tion mark. Since I shall use Lespes's work very freely in my 

 own description, I shall not review it farther here. Suffice it 

 to say that the observations are strikingly keen and correct 

 for having been made so early, and they should long since 

 have been inserted in our texts. 



Leydig (13) in his fine work, dealing more with the histo- 

 logical side of the subject, says that in many invertebrates the 

 accessory sex glands form a spermatophore. 



Milne-Edwards (15), in 1870, said, speaking of the sper- 

 matophore mentioned by Stein and Siebold: "It is possible 

 that it may exist in certain cases, but in other cases it is evi- 

 dent to me that the appendage in question was certainly a 

 part of the penis." Of Lespes's statements he writes: "It 

 does not seem to me sufficiently demonstrated that the so- 

 called spermatophore is not the terminal part of the penis 

 which in copulation is broken off and remains inserted in the 

 female apparatus, as it does so often in the case of other 

 insects." 



Milne-Edwards's prominent position, no doubt, gave his 

 work the preponderance, and so we find Lespes's work hardly 

 ever quoted. To show how it was disregarded, let me quote 

 from Girard, who wrote three large volumes on entomology. 

 In 1873 (7) he said of the glands joined to the vas deferens, 

 "They pour in a liquid to delay or modify the sperm." In the 

 third volume, in 1885 (8), he repeated the above statement 

 about delaying the sperm, and then adds, "or perhaps to give 

 more activity to the sperm, which are almost immotile in the 

 testis." 



Berlese (4) studied the external and internal genital organs 

 of various orthopteran species. In the body of his work he 

 does not seem to realize that the Gryllidse differ from the other 

 Orthoptera, and so he describes in Gt^llus a penis and all the 

 other accessory parts, without any thought of their correct 

 function. In an appended "Physiological Note" he comes 

 nearer the truth. He says, concerning copulation, that fertili- 

 zation is internal and that copulation in the Acrididse and per- 

 haps in the Mantidse is by means of a penis, the act lasting a 

 relatively long time; while in the Locustidse and Gryllidse, 

 "the male mounts on the back of the female, the penis being 

 inserted in the vagina and the sperm injected in a short time." 



