TENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 93 
the discoverer. The first picture of the ovary after that of 
Mondini, and the first microscopical plate of the egg of the eel 
Hohnbaum-Hornschuch presented in a dissertion published in 
1842—a paper which should be rightly considered as of creat 
importance in the literateure of this question. The questions 
concerning the ovaries of the eel may be regarded as having 
been brought to a distinct conclusion by Rathke, who in the 
year 1850, published an article describing a gravid female eel, 
the first and only gravid specimen which had, up to that time, 
come into the hands of an investigator.* 
HUNT FOR THE MALE EEL AND ITS DISCOVERY BY SYRSKI. 
The history of the search for the female of the eel having been 
given, for the most part,in a translation of the work of Dr. 
Jacoby, it seems appropriate to quote the same author concern- 
ing the search for the male eel, which, though much shorter, is 
none the less interesting. 
In the dissertation of Hohnbaum-Hornschuch, published in 
1842, the opinion was expressed that certain cells found by the 
author in the ovaries which differed from the egg cells by their 
form and contents, should be regarded as the spermary cells of 
the eel, and that the eel should be regarded as hermaphrodite. 
Six years latter Schluser presented an interesting dissertation 
upon the sexes of lampreys and eels, in which he pronounced 
these opinions of Hohnbaum-Hornschuch to be erroneous, and 
expressed the opinion that the male eel must be extremely rare, 
or that it was different, perhaps, from the female. From this 
aR aie, oe ES eee eee eee 
*Rathke, who first, since Mondini, has in detail described (1824, 1838, and 1850) the ovaries 
of the eel, is considered by some to have recognized them ; but this, however, is not true, the 
additions made by him to Mondini’s description being to a great extent erroneous. It is not 
true that the transverse leaflets are wanting in the ovaries of the eel, as he asserts in his last 
work, contrary to his former description, which was probaly based on the law of analogy, and 
that thereby they are distinguished from of the salmon and sturgeon. It is not true, what 
Rathke likewise asserts, that the genital opening of the eel consists of two small canals, for I 
have invariably only found one, which opens in the urethra, Rathke has certainly described 
the eggs quite exactly, distinguishing the larger whitish ones, having a diameter of about one- 
fifteenth of a line, and the smaller transparent ones, with the germinal vesicle inside ; but 
Mondini likewise says: ‘‘zznumeras spherulas minimas, equales, pellucidas, divisas tamen, 
gue in centro maculan ostendebant, ecc. vedi,’ thus showing the true nature of the ovaries 
and the eggs, and contrasting them with the fatty formation and with the ovaries and eggs of 
osseous fish.”’ (Syrski). 
