544 PRor. a. b. howes on some 



ovary are continuous ou either side and deboucli on to the 

 exterior), and those cases in which (Joe. cit. p. 29), where the 

 sexes are ordinarily distinct, individuals occasionally present 

 themselves with testis and ovary on opposite sides. He would 

 regard the latter as " pathological " ; Brock has, however, 

 objected to this distinction*, upon v/hat appear to me good 

 grounds. It would be surely preferable to retain the term 

 " pathological " for exclusively morbid and diseased conditions ; 

 and the well-established fact that the same blastema gives rise, 

 by diverse modification, to both ova and spermatozoa, justifies us 

 in regarding the various conditions of the adults last alluded to 

 as degrees of abnormality f and nothing else. 



The belief that the ancestors of the Chordata were hermaphro- 

 dite, for which Haeckel and others have specially contended, is 

 daily gaining ground J. So frequent is the occurrence, and so 

 marked are the physiological variations of the hermaphroditic con- 

 dition of the genital glands among Teleostean fishes, that Syrski 

 and Brock have been enabled to classify the same in accordance 

 as the species are invariably § or only occasionally hermaphro- 

 dite, or as they are (Serramis) or are not {GhrysopJirys) self- 

 fertilizing. Leewenhoek, in 1688, adduced good reason to 

 suppose that in the hermaphrodite Codfish which he examined 

 the genital products ripened alternately, and that the animal func- 

 tioned first as a male. In the specimen which I here figure this — 

 the characteristic feature of " successive hermaphroditism " — 

 had been realized {cf. ante, p. 51'2). Brock has shown that in 

 Chrysophrys auratus the male and female genital products ripen 

 alternately. Cunningham, in 1887, recorded (Joe, cit.) the 

 presence of both ova and spermatoblasts in the genital glands of 

 the young Hag {Myxine glutinosa) ; and Nansen (Joe. cit.), work- 

 ing at the same facts at the same time, has shown this animal 

 to be in reality a protandric hermaphrodite, producing mature 

 spermatozoa during its earlier existence, mature ova later in life. 

 Apart from the fact that this Myxinoid, lowest of the low 

 among living Yertebrata, has been thus shown to be regularly 



* Zeitschr. f. wiss. Zool. Ed. xlLv. p. 373 (1886). Cf. Max Weber, Tijdschr. 

 d. Ned. Dierkund. Vereen. ser. ii. D. i. p. 128 (1885-87). 



i' And that only as compared with the now predominant unisexual type. 



% Cf. Van Wijhe, loc. cit. p. 504. 



§ Serranus cabriUa, hepatus, scriba ; Chrysophrys auratus, PageUus mormy- 

 nis (?). For detailed list see Max Weber, Tijdschr. cit. 1884, pp. 3li-37. 



