48 



Marchand's view, for he would doubtless say that this is the proximal end of the 

 second and aborted sexual duct, whose distal end is fused with the functional 

 duct. Until the embryological history of the organs has been followed, these are 

 merely vague surmises. 



The spermatophoric gland is suspended by the vas deferens and vas efferens 

 and the connective tissue surrounding them in an ovate sac , the genital sac , 

 which was described first by Brock and later , and more correctly , by Ghujst. In 

 Illex the sac opens widely into the mantle cavity ; in Loligo vulgaris and L. marmorae 

 it is a closed sac; but in our species it is prolonged forward into a small tube 

 which , at the base of the gill , opens into the mantle cavity. The sac extends 

 upward between the vas efferens and spermatophoric sac for some distance. 



The vas efferens is a small, somewhat flattened tube, lined by a ciliated 

 epithelium which is slightly folded longitudinally. Extending backward from the 

 spermatophoric gland , it enters obliquely the lower surface of the proximal end 

 of the spermatophoric sac. 



The spermatophoric sac , or Needham's sac , is a thin-walled , broad tube 

 which lies at the side of the visceral mass, above the spermatophoric gland and 

 outside the caecum. It extends forward from near the beginning of the vas 

 deferens to the branchial heart , and merges distally into the small and more 

 muscular tube, the penis. The wall of the sac bears a large number of longitudinal 

 folds , which divide its cavity into a number of tubular spaces in which the 

 sperm atopho res are stored in small bundles. 



The penis passes thru the space between the branchial heart, the caecum 

 and the base of the gill, from which it is separated by a narrow prolongation 

 of the pallial cavity. It lies , for the greater part , in the mantle cavity between 

 the gill and rectum and beiow the siphonal retractor, and terminates near the anus. 



The spermatophoric gland secretes very complex cases in which the sper- 

 matozoa are transferred to the female. These packets of sperm , the spermato- 

 phores , (Plate I , Fig. 5) are stored in large numbers in the spermatophoric sac. 

 The spermatophore consists of a double walled case which encloses a sperm 

 rope , at one end of which is the so-called ejaculatory or flask apparatus. The 

 case is a slightly curved , slender cylinder (eighteen or twenty times as long as 

 broad) rounded at the ends and somewhat smaller at one end. The smaller end 

 contains the "ejaculatory apparatus" and bears a long tubular filament. This 

 smaller, filament bearing end, we will call the distal end of the spermatophore 

 and not with Marchand, the oral end, for it is turned away from the mouth when 

 it is in its final — shall we say functional ? — position in the buccal pit of the 

 female. In the spermatophoric gland this end turns about twice, so that a term 



