808 DR. HANS GADOW ON OVARIES 



PAPERS. 



•48. The One-si Jod deduction o£ the Ovaries and Oviducts in 

 the Amniota, with Remarks on Mammalian Evohition. 

 By Hans Gadow, M.A., Ph.D., F.ll.S., F.Z.S. 



[Received May 31, 1912 : Read June 4, 1912.] 



Index. „ 



Page 



Anatomical Structure and Development 8US 



Sanguine morphologists reckon that it takes about ten yeai'S 

 for their discoveries to tind their way into a text-book. It 

 takes a generation to eradicate erroneous statements, especially 

 generalisations, out of such books, since most of them are 

 repeated fi'oni others without consultation of the immense host 

 of original papers. And it is apparently hopeless to expect the 

 enthusiast or amateur to appreciate the difference between a 

 generalising text-book of comparative anatomy and a zootomical 

 account. It means progress for a branch of science if Aye can 

 inscribe upon its statute-book a few lines of true geneialisation, 

 which, if there be no hedging, require no longer any concrete 

 examples to be mentioned. If only partial generalisations are 

 possible, of course the exceptions are to be recorded and every 

 new case is welcome, until their accumulation in turn permits of 

 being summarised. Then let there be drawn a line, and let the 

 discoverer of f urtlier cases keep his peace unless he has something- 

 new to say. 



The condition of the bird's ovaries and oviducts is a case in 

 point. The main facts have by now become ancient history and 

 general knowledge to the zoologist, so ancient that the original 

 workers have been forgotten, as much as the name of the 

 originator of the term morphology. 



That the ovaries and ducts of birds are one-sided v/as probably 

 known since time iuniiemorial. Perrault * described and figured 

 them in the Ostrich without further comment. In the year 1810 

 Wolf mentioned that he had usually found two ovaries in the 

 Sparrow-hawk, a fact duly incorporated by Tiedemann f in his 

 excellent work, which reveals him as a zoologist far ahead of his 

 time. Next, Spangenbei-g + figured the right ovaiy in a Duck. 

 Barkow § described the occurrence of right-sided I'udiments of 

 the female geneiative apparatus in various other bii'ds, Emmert || 

 observed equally lai-ge right and left ovaries in the Sparrow- 



* Peeeault : Menioires ]iour servir ariiistoirc naturclle. Ainstcrdam, 173C. 



t TiEDKMANN : Auatouiie uud Naturgoscliiclite dcr Vogol. 1810. 



J Spangenbekg : Disquisitioiies circa partes genitales fu'miueas Avium. Got- 

 tingas, 1813, 4to. 



§ Baekow : Von dcr Kloake versclnedeiicr Yogel. Meckel's Archiv f. Anat. u. 

 Pliys., 1829. 



II Emmeet: Reil u. Autlu'uriet's Archiv. 



