128 MR. W. E. HOYLE ON THE [Mar. 5, 
enclosed by the hooded portion of the pen, and with the anterior 
end attached laterally to the posterior end of the czecal lobe of the 
stomach. The prostate gland, vesicule seminales, and spermato- 
phore-sac are small; the efferent duct is long and slender, ex- 
tending forward over and beyond the base of the left gill.” 
XI. The Funnel-Organ. 
This apparatus has been the subject of one or two communications 
within the last few months, and hence it seemed desirable to make 
what contributions to the subject were possible from the material at 
hand. Its history may be dismissed in a few words, since Dr. Brock 
has recently gone into this matter somewhat fully *. It seems to 
have been first observed by Heinrich Miiller’, who observed it in a 
large number of species during a sojourn at Messina in 1852. He 
describes the macroscopic appearance and gives some account of the 
minute structure. It consists of a median and two lateral pads. 
“Their surface,” he says, “is made up entirely of spindle-shaped 
corpuscles. .... They present great similarity to the nettle-organs 
of other animals, but are devoid of a filament... They are deve- 
loped in the interior of cells, in which they are often twisted and 
coiled in various ways.” No suggestion regarding their function is 
here propounded. 
Franz Boll*, in his classic ‘‘ Vergleichende Histiologie des Mol- 
luskentypus,”’ devotes a page to the consideration of the topic. He 
confirms Miiller’s account, and points out in addition that the fusi- 
form corpuscles (which he figures) become surrounded by an 
excretory vesicle (“Secretblischen”). He compares them with the 
rod-like bodies found in the epidermis of the Turbellaria, but makes 
no suggestion as to their proper function. 
In 1877 Bobretzky *, in his finely illustrated work on the develop- 
ment of the Cephalopoda, figured sections of the organ in the embryos 
of Loligo, and referred to it as a ‘‘ thickening of the epidermis (? rudi- 
ment of the funnel-organ).” 
In 1881 Prof. A. E. Verrill’® described a very highly developed 
form of this apparatus in the cases of T'aonius pavo and T. hyperboreus. 
Shortly afterwards I was able to show that a similar structure is 
present in all the species of that genus °, and, being at that time 
ignorant of the previous accounts of it, proposed to give it the name 
of “ Verrill’s Organ.” In the light of our present knowledge it 
seems inappropriate to continue the use of this name, and perhaps the 
proper course to pursue would be to make use of the name funnel- 
organ (“ Trichterorgan”’), which occurs in the pages of the earliest 
writers upon it. 
1 Nachrichten Gottingen, No. 17, 1888, 5 pp. 
2 Zeitschr. f. wiss. Zool. iv. p. 339 (1853), 
3 Arch. mikr. Anat. y. Suppl. p. 97 (1869). 
4 Op. cit. figs. 52, 55, 57, 74, and especially 83. 
“Cephalopods of N.E. America, II.,” Trans. Connect. Acad. v. pp. 413, 
432, pl. lv. figs. 2d, 4a. 
Loligopsis and other genera,” Proc. Roy. Phys. Soc. Edinb. viii. 1885. 
