58 DUBLIN HATUKAL HISTOEY SOCIETY. 



Concerning the Ovaky : — 



A. Arguing merely from authorities, I feel incHaed to agree with 

 Cuvier and his disciples, inasmuch as his opponents, though men of 

 great research and vast fame, are but few in number, and are equally- 

 divided in a matter of observation, upon which, in fact, their argument 

 is wholly based. 



B. I have carefully from time to time examined single lobules under 

 the microscope with the aid of the compressor, and never have I suc- 

 ceeded in bringing any contained sacculi into view ; although, when I 

 placed several lobules in the compressor, I had an appearance produced 

 somewhat resembling invagination, but evidently the result of some 

 lobule becoming superimposed, and then pressed into the substance of 

 another. 



C. There being no invaginated duct leading from the ovary, the 

 zoosperms, if there secreted, would have a greater tendency to pass into 

 the normally widened uterus than into the constricted vas deferens 

 (indeed, the latter passage could not be effected, as there is no commu- 

 nication of the vas deferens with the uterus), and so would pass away 

 externally, and be lost ; but such a state of things could not reasonably 

 exist. 



D. From my own observations I may make use of Mr. Handcock's 

 most ingenious argument applied to the I^udibranchs, that, as the zoo- 

 sperms were found in a condition of imperfect development in the 

 sperm-sac, and fully matured and isolated in the lobules of the ovary, 

 they could not have proceeded from the latter ; for, had they been there 

 secreted, they would have been observed in process of development in 

 the ovary, and fully formed and unconnected in the spermatheca. 



Respecting the Testis. 



A. As there is but one gland in connexion with the vas deferens, 

 and that so extensive as to rival the ovary in size and structure, we 

 may fairly conclude that, if a testis exists at all, it is most probably its 

 representative. It seems to me very unreasonable to term this gland, 

 as Yan Beneden has done, di prostate; such a mode of applying names to 

 parts is more to be deprecated than the barbarous terminology of human 

 anatomists, who not unfrequently call an interesting and peculiar struc- 

 ture innominata, when, to quote the language of a well-known author, 

 " their little puddle of invention has been used dry." I cannot conceive 

 what resemblance it is supposed to bear to an appendage found in 

 another sub-kingdom, and whose function is so much unknown, that of 

 two of the most distinguished physiologists of the day, one thinks it little 

 more than a mass of muscles, — the other that, most probably, it is the 

 part in the male homologous with, or representing, the uterus of the 

 female. 



B. The generative organs of the nudibranchiata, which have been so 

 ex([umtely delineated by Messrs. Alder and Ilandcock, bear on the 



