96 FISH CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
This opinion may, perhaps, have induced Dr. Syrski, director of 
the Museum of National History at Trieste, now professor in 
the university of Lemberg, when he undertook, at the request of 
the marine officials of Trieste, the determination of the spawning 
time of the fish which were caught in that region, and was 
obliged to take up the eel question, to devote his attention es- 
pecially to the smaller eels. Dr. Hermes, in behalf of Dr. Syrs- 
ki, protests against this idea, stating, on the authority of the 
latter, that the published opinions of Giinther and Darwin were 
unknown to him prior to the publication of Jacoby’s paper. 
Up to that time every investigator had chosen for investigation 
the largest and fattest of eels, thinking that the largest and 
oldest specimens must have the most highly developed organs 
of generation. On Nov. 29th, 1873, Syrski found in the second 
specimen which he investigated—an individual 15 inches long, 
which is now preserved in the museum at Trieste—a completely 
new organ, which had never before been seen within the eel by 
any former investigator, although tens of thousands of eels had 
been zealously studied.* Syrski published his discovery 
in the April number of the proceedings of the Imperial 
Academy of Sciences, Vienna, in 1874. The most important 
point of the discovery was stated to be that in all the specimens 
of eels in which the Syrskian organ was found, the well known 
collar-and-cuff shaped ovary, the female organ of generation, 
was entirely wanting. It was evident from this that eels were 
not hermaphrodites. The question now arose, is the newly dis- 
covered organ in the eel, in its external form, as well as inner 
structure, so different from the ovary that it could be considered 
as a partially developed or peculiarly shrunken ovary ? Accord- 
ing to all researches which have up to this time been made, 
there is the highest kind of probability that this newly discov- 
* **T commenced my investigations,’’ writs Syrski, ‘‘ on the 29th November last year (1873), 
and already in the second eel which I dissected on that day I found the testicles, and therefore 
a male individual of the eel. I sent in March of the following year (1874) to the Academy of 
Sciences in Vienna a preliminary communication, which was read at the public session held 
the 15th April, and printed in the reports of the academy.” 
- : f 33 . i 8 
In 1875 Professor Von Siebold found male eels in the Baltic at Wismar, although this dis~ 
covery was not at that time made known to the public. They have since been found in the 
German Ocean, in the Atlantic, and in the Mediterranean. 
