378 Dr. Burnett on the Renal Organs of the Vertebrata. 
As I have shown elsewhere,* the receptacle of this urinary ex- 
cretion of the Wolffian bodies is the Allantois, which, as I have 
described in the paper referred to, is at first, properly nothing but 
their receptacular appendix—the excretory ducts terminating in 
it below. 
In conclusion, I may remark that the Wolffian bodies are tran- 
sient in all their relations; they subserve nothing for the forma- 
tion of the permanent organs that succeed them—being every 
way distinct structures; and the testicles or ovaries which are 
first observed on their bodies, have no other relation with the part 
on which they rest except that of mere contact. 
But before leaving this section of the subject, I think it neces- 
sary to explain one point which otherwise might seem assumed 
on too little authority. I refer to the statement I have already 
made that the Wolffian Bodies are absent in the Amphibian Rep- 
tiles. This, as is well known to physiologists, is directly opp 
to the views of Miiller, and therefore demands here a special ref- 
erence. 
Among Miiller’s earliest anatomical publications, upon the for- 
mation of glandular structures and particularly those of the genl- 
tal apparatus, he pointed out and gave a careful descriptiont of 
what he regarded as a new structure in the embryos of Amphibia. 
Up to this time, the so-called Wolffian bodies had not been 0 
served by Meckel, and Rathke, who had specially studied them, 
in either the Fishes or the Amphibian Reptiles,—and these new- 
ly-discovered structures Miller regarded as a peculiar form of the 
Wolffian bodies. He described them as two organs situated, one 
on each side of the vertebral column, directly under the branchie 
of the larve of Batrachians, and from which proceeds a duct that 
runs along the side of the vertebral column and opens, finally, into 
the lower portion of the intestinal canal. 
But the presence of these organs, thus carefully described and 
especially by so excellent an authority, has not been acceded to 
by all, although by most, subsequent microscopical anatomusts it 
membrane and the muscular tunic of the vagina, and open, at last, near the urea 
y ; imordial Nieren, 10- 
view 
a paper, On the ai tio 
Amer. Acad. of Arts and Sciences, Boston, for October, 1852. his 
+ J. Miller, Bildungsgeschichte der Genitalien, Dusseldorff, 1830. See an 
De Glandularum secernenti ura penitiori earumque prima formatione, 1830, 
D . éd. Paris, 1851, 
r e lum. struct 
p- — xii, and his Physiologie, transl. by Jourdan, &e., Deux 
p. 758. 
¢ Among those who have followed Miiller, may be mentioned H. Meckel, (2% 
Morphologie die Harn—und Geschlechtswerkzeuge der Wirbelthiere, Halle, 15% 
and Reichert, (Das Entwickelungsleben im Wirbelthier-Reich, 1840, p- 26). = 
