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XX1I.— Fragmentary Notes on the Generative Organs of some Cartilaginous Fishes. 
By Joun Davy, M.D., F.R.S. Lond. and Edin., &e. (Plate XXII.) 
(Read 7th January 1861. 
These notes have been made at different intervals of time, and in different 
places,—some, and the majority of them, in Malta, in 1832-33,—some at Con- 
stantinople in 1839-40, and a few at a still earlier period, viz. in 1816, when on 
a voyage to Ceylon. 
Imperfect and brief as many of them are, I am induced to submit them to the 
Society, thinking they may be of some use as conveying the results of unbiassed 
observation, and that, as such, they may prove a small contribution to a difficult 
branch of icthyology,—difficult, not indeed so much from the nature of the sub- 
ject as from the comparatively few opportunities enjoyed by naturalists of obtain- 
ing specimens. 
In accordance with the heading, I may premise that, in the details to be given, 
I shall do little more than transcribe the account of the particulars observed, and 
nearly in the words employed at the time of noting them down,—and this, though 
the terms may not always be of the most approved and correct kind. 
The only general remarks I shall have to offer will be a few in conclusion. 
1. Of the Squalus Squatina.—The notes I have on this fish were all made in 
Malta. The subjects of them were two females in a gravid state, and the gene- 
rative organs detached of other eight, which were procured from the fishmarket 
of Valetta,—the Squatina being a fish there in some request amongst the lower 
classes as an article of diet. 1 shall give them nearly in the order in which they 
were made, submitting a brief notice of the organs in question, conveying the 
idea I have been able to form of their general structure. 
In most respects they are very similar to the same organs in the torpedo.* 
Like them, they may be said to consist chiefly of three parts: the ovaries, situ- 
ated high up above the liver; of oviducts, with a common infundibulum; and 
of two uterine cavities, expansions as it were of the oviducts. Each oviduct has 
two glandular bodies, one above the other, not unlike the one belonging to the 
oviduct of the torpedo, but somewhat larger, and its transverse striz more 
strongly marked. The uterine cavities differ from those of the torpedo, in being 
smooth and entirely destitute of villi. During gestation they seem to be virtually 
closed, so that though a probe can be passed, both in the direction of the ovaries 
. * See Physiol. and Anat. Res,, vol. i. p. 55, for an account of these organs. 
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