DUBLIN NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETT. 57 



or trumpet-like. Thus it would seem to have the power of conveying 

 the product of secretion of the follicle (if any) through the dart, and in 

 this way by inoculation of inflicting the "love-inspiring wound." I 

 believe it has been asserted on all hands that the stilette never pene- 

 trates beyond the integument of the animal agninst which it is pro- 

 jected ; that such an assertion is correct I must with all deference 

 deny, as I have in several instances observed it lying deeply imbedded 

 among the viscera, whilst a second, quite distinct, existed in its normal 

 position within the sac ; nay more, from one specimen, which I ex- 

 amined at the period of depositing the eggs, I succeeded in extracting 

 two almost perfect darts. 



The multifid vesicles are a number of branching coeca, produced 

 by the dichotomous division and subdivision of two small ducts, whose 

 orifices are situate upon each side of the vagina, adjacent to its union 

 with the dart-sac. In all there are about forty coeca, and each group 

 extends for about half an inch in the lateral direction. As yet no distinct 

 function has been assigned to them. 



The cloaca is the canal which leads from without to the two great 

 orifices of the genital organs within ; it is of all, the most anterior ; it is 

 a very flexible vessel, about a quarter of an inch in length, and one- 

 eighth in calibre; it terminates externally in a vertical slit, closed 

 during life by a sphincter of elastic membrane. This, which is some- 

 times termed the generative outlet, lies at the distance of a quarter of 

 an inch from the upper tentacle, on the right side, in a plane posterior, 

 and a little inferior. I^ear this outlet is the communication with the 

 penis, whilst at the further extreme of the cloaca is observed the orifice 

 of the dart-sac before-mentioned. 



It will be seen by the foregoing remarks that I have taken a view 

 of the parts composing the generative system difierent from that here- 

 tofore put forward on the matter. The older supposition was, that the 

 liver-imbedded gland represented the ovary, whilst the tongue or boat- 

 shaped structure performed the part of testes;*' more recently it has 

 been conceived by Henrich Meckel, Siebold, Gegenbaur, and Moquin- 

 Tandon, that the so-called ovary of the older writers is in reality an 

 hermaphrodite gland, each lobule of which has contained within it a 

 second, the external secreting ova, the internal zoospores, the oviduct 

 also having a second vessel invaginated by it. Of these four, however, 

 the two latter, who have been the latest to write upon the subject, deny 

 that any included sac or duct exists. Moquin-Tandon, moreover, fol- 

 lows Yan Beneden in his ideas concerning the prostate. 



The following are some of the reasons which urged the adoption of 

 the view I have now put forward. 



* This was Cuvier's idea, and also that of J. F. Meckel, Carus, Erdl, Sister, Ben- 

 dach, Pappenheim, Berthelen, Fyfe, and Rymer Jones. Van Beneden also held it; but 

 he considered that gland a prostate, which is here maintained to be in the sperm-secret- 

 ing organ. 



