Spermatophora of molluscous Cephalopods, §c. 71 



Eledon musque, Seiche officinale, Calmar commun ; in these 

 creatures these spermatic filaments were found abundantly. 

 Their conformation differs according to the species to which 

 they belong, but we always distinguish a sheath in the form of 

 a siliqua, composed of two tunics, and containing in its inte- 

 rior a long tube turned on itself like an intestine, filled with 

 a white opaque matter, and in connection with a membranous 

 apparatus more or less translucid. This intestine-like tube 

 is a spermatic reservoir containing millions of Zoosperm, 

 and the apparatus to which it is attached by its anterior 

 extremity, serves to burst the sheath, and to determine the 

 exit of the spermatic reservoir itself. The structure of 

 this ejaculating organ varies according to the species, and 

 the mechanism by the aid of which the projection of the 

 spermatic reservoir is effected differs equally in all the Ce- 

 phalopods submitted to our examination ; drawings were ex- 

 hibited to the Academy to elucidate this description. 



Thus these bodies, which Cuvier called the filamentary 

 machines of Needham, are neither spermatic animalculae, nor 

 parasitical worms, but organs of fecundation, such as I am 

 unacquainted with an example of, in the animal kingdom. We 

 propose to denominate them Spermatophorce, and can compare 

 them to nothing better than to grains of pollen contained in 

 the fecundating corpuscles, and which burst in the same 

 way to discharge themselves when they have arrived from 

 the male to the female organ of a flower. 



It is probable that those Spermatophorae are also in Ce- 

 phalopods a means of transport for the seminal fluid, by the 

 aid of which it arrives in the female apparatus, notwith- 

 standing all absence of an organ of copulation ; as for the 

 spermatic animalculae contained in the interior of these sin- 

 gular bodies, they differ in nothing from those of other ani- 

 mals : only you will remark that they offer a difference either 

 in volume or in form, in each of the Cephalopods I have 

 mentioned above. 



