OF THE AMERICAN KING-CRAB. 485 
Parts of the ovary are single and median; the rest consists of parial symmetrical 
lateral ramified tubes, chiefly situated in the cephaletron. 
The hindermost cavity (Pl. XXXVIII. fig. 6, q) is a longitudinal tube, commencing by 
a blind end above the rectum; it extends forward, expands, and bifurcates about the 
middle of the thoracetron ; the branches at first diverge, then bend inward and reunite, 
sending back into the interspace of the bifurcation a short blind sac. From the base of 
this heart-shaped portion the bifurcate tubes are continued forward, slightly diverging, 
leaving a mid space for the heart and intestine as they cross the articulation between 
the thoracetron and the cephaletron. About two inches in advance of, the second 
bifurcation each tube expands laterally into a triangular cavity, from the outer and fore 
angles of which the ramified systems of the lateral loops, q”, are continued. A small 
branch is sent off from the outer side of the dilatation. "Three or four tubes converge 
from its fore part, and anastomose t to form the anterior single symmetrical cavity, q*. 
This is oblong, subquadrate, subdepressed, and subreticulate. It is longitudinally chan- 
nelled above, by the fore part of the heart resting thereupon, this part of the ovary being 
interposed between the heart and intestine (Pl. XXXVII. figs. 1 and 2, q). It seems to 
have been developed in or from the last remnant of the included germ-mass. From the 
hinder and outer angles of the antero-median part of the ovary proceeds the tube, which 
passes outward and backward, joins that from the fore part of the lateral expansion, and 
curves outward and forward to meet and inosculate with a similar retrograde branch from 
the fore and outer angle of the antero-median lobe. From the outer side of these ovarian 
loops (Pl. X XXVI. fig. 2, q**, and Pl. XX XVIII. fig. 6, q”) proceed four or five branches 
which interramify with the hepatic lobes. The branch tubes (g*) continue from the fore 
part of the antero-median sac; and its loops are continued, subdividing and reticularly 
anastomosing, along the sides of the gizzard to the fore part of the cephaletron. 
. Each of the main parial oviducal canals, before converging to the anterior reunion, 
dilates and sends outward and backward a wide tube, which after sending off, or rather 
receiving, three large tubes (g**) is continued backward as the common oviduct (Pl. 
XXXVI. fig. 2, o; Pl. XXXVIII. fig. 6, o). The hindmost of the three large tubes 
passes outward and baekward to near the outer ends of the joint between the cephaletron 
and thoracetron, and there curves forward beneath the lateral cephaletral ridge, and 
receives the ova from the parts of the ovary extending to the lateral margins of the 
cephaletral cavity. The foremost of the three branches collects the ova from the deeper- 
seated interapodemal parts of the ovarium, the intermediate branch those from the dorsal 
level above and exterior to the apodemata. 
The numerical correspondence of the lateral tributaries to the main median or sub- 
median receptacles of the ova with the neural indications of the segmental constitution 
of the two chief divisions of the body, is less obvious than in those of the hepatic masses. 
This may be due to the later period of development of the genital factories. 
+ ‘ Lectures on Invertebrata, ed. 1855, p. 329: shown, in Maia, in fig. 135, a’, Y. Anastomoses between the 
right and left system of ovarium-tubes were also noticed by Gegenbaur (lac. cit. p. 247), who well remarks on this 
evidence of crustaceous affinity :—* Durch diese Verbindung beider Ovarialhülften reiht sich Limulus an viele andere 
Krustenthiere an, wo gleichfals ein unpaarer Abschnitt der inneren Genitalorgane vorhanden ist." 
