/ 558 Bashford Dean Memorial Volume 



eggs", but that is what these eggs were. I measured a number of these capsules from 

 Ginglymostoma and found them always smaller than normal (fertile) eggs such as that 

 shown in Text'figure 16. 



The only other evidence of bilateral functioning of the oviducts- in Chlamydo- 

 selachus is found in Dean's notebook. In one place he says of a l620'mm. specimen "both 

 ovid. same size", but he does not say that both were functioning. They may have been 

 found in a sexually immature fish such as Smith had (Text'figure 10). However, from a 

 1392'mm. female taken about October 1, 1905, Dean records "3 oblong eggs, 135 mm. and 

 larger in r. ovd." and a "small wind egg in 1.". He states that two oblong eggs and the 

 wind egg were drawn. The two oblong eggs I identify with the drawings shown in 

 Figures 2 and 3, plate I; and the wind egg as that portrayed in color in Figure 51, plate V. 

 From another female taken May 25, 1906, Dean records eggs "1. ovd. 3, 2 in r." but 

 unfortunately he gives no description of these eggs. 



It is very interesting and possibly significant that, so far as we have data, when eggs 

 are found in both oviducts of Chlamydoselachus, there is something wrong with them. 

 According to Collett both sets of eggs from his fish were "immature" — whatever that 

 may mean. In Dean's first case, the egg from the left uterus was abnormal — an empty 

 dwarf shell — while the eggs from the right side were at least unusual if not abnormal. All 

 three were "oblong" — two of them in varying degrees, (Figure 2 and 3, plate I). One 

 (Figure 2) is oblong but symmetrical, the other (Figure 3) is not only oblong but unsym' 

 metrical, and is possessed of a most unusual process. Of the eggs from the two oviducts 

 of his specimen taken May 25, 1906, Dean unfortunately gives neither figures nor 

 descriptions. 



As bearing on this matter, it may be noted here that the nurse shark has the right 

 ovary only fertile but both uteri functional. Infertile wind eggs, always smaller than 

 fertile ones (size about 105 mm. long by 120 in circumference) are found in both uteri of 

 this shark, but are apparently more abundant in the left. 



One wishes much for definite data here about Chlamydoselachus. What were 

 Collett's "immature eggs?" What kind of eggs were those noted by Dean in the "1. ovid. 

 3"? Were they defective? The predominance of the right oviduct is of course correlated 

 with the narrow abdomen of this "snakclike" shark — there is not room in the crowded 

 abdominal cavity for two gravid uteri. Yet Dean states that he found such in two speci- 

 mens. Here is a problem for someone in Japan to solve. 



These data from Collett and from Dean show us that the commonly accepted dictum, 

 that the right oviduct only in Chlamydoselachus is functional, is not always true, even 

 though all other investigators have so found or thought. Since Dean's notes show that 

 the "1. ovid." is sometimes functional, they have been quoted carefully and in full. Into 

 Dean's hands there undoubtedly came more female specimens (26 in number) than have 

 been had by all other students of Chlamydoselachus taken together. This of course made 

 possible his discovery of the functioning of the left oviduct in his two specimens. Un- 

 doubtedly this functioning is very unusual and apparently it is not wholly normal. 



