the Memoirs on Loxosoma. 
401 
rq/a, that in the buccal canal, in a shallow diverticulum or a 
sort of crop, the tough contents of the canal, which had not yet 
passed into the stomach, were collected into a ball, and gradu¬ 
ally drawn out into the likeness of threads and twisted into a 
coil, so that the complete hall presented a delusive resemblance 
to a packet of semen. It seems to me certain that some such 
pseudoseminal ball, which was vomited forth by the animal 
in consequence of gentle pressure, led Vogt into error. Even 
when the animals were most roughly treated, I have never 
witnessed a rupture of the seminal vesicle, which is furnished 
with an exceedingly firm Avail. 
Gemmation. — I come now to the difficult question of the 
origin of the buds. I was very quickly convinced by Nitsche 
that my reference of this process to an egg-development Avas 
a misconception, although my numerous sketches always drove 
me back to seek in the foundation of the bud for something 
else than one or more cells of the skin. Nitsche declared 
“ the most important result ” of his iinvestigation to be the 
definitive proof that the Avhole bud is formed from the ecto¬ 
derm of the parent—a result Avhich, Avhen closely examined, 
Avas at least quite as remarkable as my assertion. Salensky 
has supported Nitsche, as also did Vogt previously. “The 
production of buds,” he says, “ only proceeds from the hypo¬ 
dermic layer ”*. Nevertheless “ this most important result ” is 
erroneous; and as Nitsche finds my error partially explicable 
by my having been reminded of egg-development by the 
very remarkable formation of germ-layers, so I also believe 
that Nitsche Avould have been preserved from his mistake by 
the investigation of living material. At least Loxosoma Ke- 
fersteinii appears to me to be one of the species in which the 
position of the viscera renders the tracing of these conditions 
not impossible. 
Whilst I Avas occupied in Naples, in'the spring of 1877, 
with my renewed investigation of Loxosoma , and attained the 
result which Avill be mentioned immediately, Hatschek Avas 
tracing the gemmation of Pedicellina very carefully at Trieste. 
He referred the primitive germ-layers of the bud to the cor¬ 
responding parts in the parent animal, in accordance Avitli the 
observations made in other classes of animals, and declared 
himself to be in absolute contradiction to Nitsche, who derives 
the bud of Loxosoma from the single-layered ectodermal lamina 
of the parent animal. u I believe,” he says, “ that in the bud¬ 
forming region, which Nitsche represents as a single-layered 
cell-lamina, all the germ-layers are present just as in Pedi- 
* Repeated in Zeitsclir. fur Aviss. Zool. Bd. xxx. 2, p. 377. 
