434 Prof. E. Kay Lankester on the 



" Dahin gehoren in erster Linle die Kiemen und die Geruchs- 

 organe, das Herz mit seinem zwei Vorhofen und endlich nach 

 den Beobachtungen v. Jherings die Nieren." Further, he dis- 

 cusses whether one of the " von v. Jhering beschriebenen 

 Organe" may not be identical with the anal gland of Murex. 

 I am not of the opinion that it is a reasonable thing to allow 

 one's priority in such a matter to be handed by one writer to 

 another without making any protest. Hence these few lines. 

 I may add that Dr. Jhering, in his memoir published in 

 1877, states that he was unable to find an opening leading 

 from the pericardium into the renal organ as described by me. 

 During April of this year I have, with the cooperation of 

 ray assistant Mr. A. G. Bourne, examined fresh limpets as 

 to the pericardial orifice. Its presence can be demonstrated 

 both by injections which pass from the pericardium, some- 

 times into the right, sometimes into the left renal sac, and by 

 dissection. The orifice leads directly into a narrow subanal 

 tract of the further or right renal sac, and not directly into 

 the left or small renal sac, which, on account of its proximity, 

 might have been expected to be the sac in communication with 

 the pericardium. That the pericardial orifice should open 

 directly into the large, or right, or infraanal renal organ of 

 Patella, and not into the small one, is especially remarkable 

 when we remember that it is the small renal sac which, lying 

 dorsal and to the left of the rectum (in the primitive uncoiled 

 condition of the visceral mass the small sac would obviously 

 enough be to the right, and not to the left, of the rectum), 

 would seem to correspond with the single renal sac of other 

 Gasteropods. 



II. Mr. W. K. Brooks has recently given an account, with 

 figures, of the development of the Squid (' Anniversary 

 Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History'), which, 

 besides quotations from the writings of KoUiker, myself, 

 and Bobretzky, contains sketches of the well-known surface- 

 appearances exhibited by living specimens of Loligo at a few 

 stages of its development. Mr. Brooks, however, is led to 

 offer some reflections on the homologies of the arms, funnel, 

 and yelk-sac of the embryo Cephalopod with parts of the adult 

 Gasteropod. I cannot agree him when he says that he 

 has " been so fortunate as to fill a gap by finding embryos 

 which exhibit general molluscan characteristics ;" and I can 

 find nothing new in his comparison of the embryo Cephalopod 

 with an embryo Pulmonate, excepting what I regard as erro- 

 neous. He is mistaken in quoting me as favouring a close 

 comparison of the shell-gland discovered by me in Gastero- 



