94 FISH CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
time up to the beginning of 1870 a male eel was never seen, nor 
do we find any opinions expressed concerniug the form of the 
male of the eel or its reproductive organs.* 
According to Robins in 1846, George Louis Duvemoy (Cuvier, 
Anatomie Comparée, ed. 2, 1848, tome viii, p. 117) described the 
ruffle-tube type of the testis of the lampreys and eels, with the 
free margin festomed in lobules, shorter to the right than to the 
left, like the ovaries, etc. He added: “ At the breeding season, we 
perceive in it an innumerable quantity of granulations, or small 
spermatic capsules, the rounded form of which has often led to 
their being confounded with the ovaler, at least as the eels, in 
which, in reality, these capsules are nearly of the same size as 
the ovules, but the latter are distinguished by their oval form.” 
The ovular are spherical, and not oval; but the other facts are 
fundamentally correct. It is also in error that Duvemoy adds 
(p. 133): “The eels and the lampreys have no deferent, canal, any 
more than an oviduct. Like the ovathe semen ruptures the capsu- 
ler in which it has collected and diffuses itself in the abdominal 
cavity, whence it is expelled in the same way as in the ova.” 
But he correctly describes the place of opening of the penbucal 
canal, the waters, etc. Robin, Comptes Renders, 1881, p. 383, 
By some droll coincidence the university of Bologna and, soon 
after, that of Pavia, were again prominent participants in the eel 
tournament. At the meeting of the Bologna Academy, Decem- 
ber 28th 1871, Prof .G. B. Ercolani read a paper upon the perfect 
hermaphroditism in the eel.* 
Fourteen days later Prof. Balsamo Crivelliand L. Maggi read 
a detailed and elaborate paper upon the “true organs of gener- 
ation in eels.” These investigators, without concerted action, 
had all at once brought up the celebrated issue of the previous 
century ; this time, however, having specially in view the male 
organs of the eel, while all were convinced that they had reached 
a final result by their investigations. The results were certainly 
very peculiar. In the paper of Ercolani it was claimed that the 
*Jacoby states that in a paper by Rathke, pvblished in the Archiv fur naturgeschichte 
in 1838, he remarked, ‘* I expect soon to be able to say something concerning the male organs 
of the eel.”’ 
It would be very interesting to know whether in the papers left by this skillful investigator 
there may not have been recorded some valuable observations concerning the male eel. 
