16 ZOOLOGY OF THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. SAMARANG. 



of studying in a better specimen the relations of the shell of the Spirula, and especially of 

 its last or open chamber with the muscular system of the animal. 



And, indeed, notwithstanding the specimen which I have had the good fortune here to 

 examine, has contributed some additional facts relative to the principal parts of the body 

 of the Spirula, many others of equal importance still remain to be determined. Such, for 

 example, as the structure of the male organs, the structure of the female organs, particularly 

 as to whether the oviduct be single or double ; whether complicated by glandular enlarge- 

 ments, or associated with independent rudimental glands. M. de Blainville notices the fact 

 of one large eye remaining attached to his mutilated specimen. That the eyes are sessile, 

 the law of the interdependencies of the dibranchiate organic characters would justify us in 

 concluding in the Decapodous Spirula ; but the structure of the eyes and the condition 

 of the eyelids have yet to be determined. The brain and cranium, the principal nerves, 

 the tongue, beak, and lips, are also amongst the wholly unknown organs of the Spirula ; and 

 every earnest cultivator of Natural History in its comprehensive and truly scientific sense, 

 must greatly desiderate the requisite means of effecting that which would enable the zoologist 

 to say with truth, that he at length possessed an exact description of all the principal parts 

 of the body of the Spirula. 



DESCRIPTION OF Plate IV. 



Fig. 1. Side view of Sir E. Belcher's specimen of Spirula Peronii. 



Fig. 4. Front view of ditto. 



Fig. 5. Back view of ditto. 



Fig. 6. Back view with the shell depressed, exposing the aperture of the mantle through which the siphon passed 



to the base of the liver : — all of the natural size. 

 Fig. 1.* Side view of the specimen of Spirula Peronii, figured by Peron, copied from the Atlas du Voyage aux 



Terres Australes, tab. xxx. fig. 4. 

 Fig. 2. Side view of the specimen of Spirula australis from New Zealand, in the Museum of Hugh Cuming, Esq., 



F.L.S. : — natural size. 

 Fig. 3. Side view of a mutilated example of Spirula reticulata, captured by George Bennett, Esq., off Timor: — 



natural size 



les autres, de maniere quelquefois a former un tout solide" (lb. p. 375). "Le siphon membraneux n'est lui-meme* 

 qu'une partie de ce muscle (le muscle columellaire ou retracteur de la tete). II est assez difficile de coneevoir 

 que si le prolongement tubuliforme qui se loge dans le siphon de la Sprrule n'est pas creux, il le soit dans le 

 Nautile," p. 380. To this not very philosophic scepticism of my account of the siphon in the Nautilus, Mr. Broderip 

 has replied by referring M. de Blainville to the easy determination of the tubular structure of the membranous 

 siphon of that genus, by examining its dried remains in any recent Nautilus' shell. He refers to my preparation 

 (no. 900, B, Physiological Series, Coll. of Surgeons), in which a part of the siphon is preserved attached to the 

 animal which I dissected in 1832, and says, "We have minutely examined the preparation, and can vouch for the 

 accuracy of the description ; no one at all versed in the subject can see the former without being satisfied that the 

 prolongation of the mantle and membranous tube to form the siphon is tubular, and not solid." — Penny Cyclopaedia, 

 Article Spirulidce. 



