Tlic Aaatomjj of OinstJiopatus ciiictipes. 



83 



■Oakley (1884) of -the birth of the young in two specimens of P. 

 caponsis, which may be repeated here : — - 



A ? fomid on 29th April, 1883, 

 jave birth to 19 young, viz. : — 



2 on 2nd May, 

 4 „ 4th „ 



7 between 4th and 8th May, 



1 on 21st May, 



3 „ 25th „ 



2 „ 28th „ 



i.e., 19 during 27 days. 



A 2 found on 3rd May, 1883, 

 gave birth to 23 young, viz. : — 

 4 on 6th May, 



2 , 

 4 , 

 4 ., 



2 : 



3 : 

 3 : 



1 ., 



i.e. 



7th „ 



night of 7th to 8th, 

 8th to 9th, 

 9th to 10th, 



10th, 



16th, 



21st, 



23 during 16 days. 



In view of Bouvier's statement I re-examined several other species 

 ■of Peripatopsis but failed to find any case in which the embryos 

 differed much from one another. For instance, in a female of 

 P. sadgioicki, Pure, there were a considerable number of far-advanced 

 embryos lying all round the intestinal canal over its whole length. 

 All were pigmented and mostly of the same size, but a few were 

 slightly smaller than the rest. One of the smallest and one of the 

 largest embryos is represented in fig. 18, from which it is at once 

 •evident that the relative proportions here differ considerably from 

 those of the two embryos of OpistJwpatus represented in fig. 19. 



From the same specimen of P. sedgioicki I removed a piece of uterus 

 containing what I took at first to be an embryo very much larger 

 than the others, but on dissecting away part of the wall of the duct 

 in order to sketch the embryo I discovered that it was really made 

 up of three separate embryos, all extended and overlapping and so 

 closely appressed to each other that they appeared like a single one. 

 As I cannot suppose that Bouvier made a similar mistake, nor that 

 he was alluding to the two brOods of successive years during the 

 short period when both are present in the oviduct at the same time, 

 it would be interesting to have some fuller information as to what he 

 really saw. 



8. The male genital organs. 



The genital organs of the male were studied in a dissected drowned 

 specimen from Richmond (fig. 15) and in a series of sections of a 

 well-preserved spirit specimen from Dunbrody (fig. 25). The 

 -structure was the same in both, but the relative thickness of the 



8 



