564 DR. F. E. BEDDARD ON 



called is of a proglottid filled with completely matui-e eggs, 

 enclosed in their shell, and which have developed into embryos. 

 It is rather remarkable to find that the receptaculuni is so small 

 and immature in a section which is otherwise quite ripe. For 

 the receptacvilum does not suggest a reservoir from which the 

 contents have been recently expelled ; it distinctly suggests an 

 incompletely developed receptaculuni. On the other hand, text- 

 figure 92 B is from a section of which the maturity was less 

 advanced. The testes were fully ripe, and the ovaries quite 

 developed ; but thei'e were no ova scattered through the paren- 

 chyma at all. And if I have missed any in the examination of 

 the section, they mvist at most have been few. Yet in this 

 section, as will be seen from the drawing cited, the receptaculum 

 seminis is very large and quite distended with abundant sperm. 

 Nor can this difiiculty be explained away on the assumption that 

 one of the two vaginae in the fully-ripe pi-oglottid was more 

 mature than the other, and may have been the storehouse of the 

 sperm after copulation. For I ascertained that the vaginse on 

 both sides of the body were in an identical state of maturity. 



The ovaries in this species are distinctly double, and lie one on 

 each side of the progiottids a little way behind the point of 

 opening of the generative ducts. The ovary is in each case 

 immediately followed by the vitelline gland. There seem to be no 

 features of special interest about either the ovaries or the vitelline 

 glands. On the other hand, the cavities lodging the ripe eggs are 

 remarkable, and like those of but few other tapeworms that have 

 been described. I do not give to these cavities the name of 

 " uterus," for it does not seem to me to be proved that they 

 actually correspond to the uterus of such genera as Choanotcenia, 

 Hymenolejns, etc. The spaces indeed to which I here refer are more 

 comparable, as it appears to me, to those of the Dipylidium, which 

 have already been described in the present paper, and to be rather 

 lacunee in the medullary network than deliberate pre-existing- 

 cavities at first united to form a single cavity. I believe, indeed, 

 that there is no such fragmentation here of a pre-existing uterus 

 as, for example, I have lately described * in my genus Otiditoenia. 



For it is hard to believe that a uterus like that of so many 

 tapeworms can exist in the present species. As already men- 

 tioned, in the more anterior progiottids, where the testes are 

 fully ripe and the ovaries fully formed, there is no trace of any 

 sac which might be considered to be a uterus. Nor, indeed, 

 among the closely adpressed testes which occupy so much of the 

 interior of these progiottids does it seem that room exists for 

 the development of a uterus. In any case nothing obvious of 

 the kind is visible. It is in riper progiottids which are more 

 elongated in their form that the " uterine " spaces referred to are 

 first visible. They lie (text-fig. 93) scattered among the testes, 



* " On a New Genus of Tapeworms {Otiditcenia) from the Bustard {Eupodotis 

 Tcori)," P.Z.S. 1912, p. 194. 



