nERMAPHRODITE GENITALIA OF THE CODFISH. 551 



presence of the ducts in the male Teleostean; ii., the uudoubted 

 fact that tlie general organization of Osmerus is of a much lower 

 type than that of either Salmo or Cohitis, not to say than that of 

 the other ductless genera named. 



On the whole, I am inclined to acquiesce in the view of 

 Eathke *, Huxley t, and Balfour %, and to regard the Salmonoid- 

 Mursenoid type as the expression of a loss of the ducts ; but I look 

 upon the Osmeroid type as the lowest term in the series, and 

 consider the more typically Teleostean condition (ex. Gadus) on 

 the one hand and the Salmonoid-Mursenoid one on the other, as 

 having resulted from divergent modification of the former 

 along opposite lines. Huxley has proposed § to term the closed 

 condition (ex. Gadus) the Cystoarian, and that of the Smelt the 

 JElasmo avian 1 and for the ductless type the designation Gym- 

 noarian may perhaps suffice. I would point out, in support 

 of my conclusion, that Argentina, whose genital glands have 

 been shown by Max "Weber || to be in a less specialized con- 

 dition than those of Osmerus, has well-developed ducts ; and 

 that the researches of McLeod, Balfour and Parker, and Brock 

 have shown the cystoarian type to pass through an elasmoarian 

 stage. Further, by way of guarding against future confusion 

 between the simple so-called " oviduct " of the Teleostei and 

 Ganoids and the more complex Miillerian oviduct of other Verte- 

 brata, which are in all probability non-homologous, the former 

 might be termed the ovary-duct. 



V. To turn, in conclusion, to the MarsipohrancMi. The 

 genital organs of these fishes discharge their products through a 

 couple of perforations in the side walls of the so-called urinary or 

 urino-genital cloaca. Miiller long ago described in relation to 

 these so-called " abdominal pores " membranous tubes ; and 

 Vogt and Pappenheiiu have described in relation to each a short 



* Loc. cit. pp. 124-125. 

 t Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. 1883, p. 137. 

 \ Oomp. Emb. vol. ii. p. 580. 



§ Lectures, 1884. For permission to embody the terms employed in this para- 

 graph, the author acknowledges his deep indebtedness to his honoured master, 

 !| Morph. Jahrb. Ed. xii. p. 395. 



