320 General Notes. [ May, 
Packard and Dr. C. S. Minot, who were then led to conclude 
that the so-called male eels were immature females, and the mis- 
take was corrected by Prof. Packard in the February NATURALIST. 
_A large number of living eels were then examined by Messrs. 
Packard, Kingsley, Pierce and. Minot without success, until at 
Prof. Packard’s request Mr. Kingsley spent a few days at Wood’s 
Holl, at the laboratory of the U. S. Fish Commission, in the last 
of February, examining living eels supplied by Mr. Vinal N. 
Edwards, by favor of Prof. Baird, U. S. Fish Commissioner. One 
hundred and ninety-three eels were there examined, and of these, 
three were found by Mr. Kingsley to be, in his opinion, males. 
His observations made on these living individuals, which were 
speared in a pond through the ice, are as follows: 
“On February 18, 19 and 20, I examined one hundred and 
ninety-three eels, at Wood’s Holl, and found three males, the 
testes of which agreed closely with Syrski’s figures as reproduced 
in the U. S. Fish Commission Report for 1873-4 and 1874-5, p. 
719. Although I made careful examination I could find no 
external characters to separate the sexes. The three males were 
each about seventeen inches long, while the females examined 
varied from about twelve inches to nearly three feet. This average 
length of males agrees closely with Syrski’s (430 mm, in length). 
The principal criticisms I would make of his figures, or rather 
points of difference that I found, are that his enlarged figure 
showing the lobulation of the testis has the lobes far more 
crowded than they were in the specimens I examined. His draw- 
ing of the histological structure was greatly larger than what I 
supposed to be the same. His cells measure, according to the 
explanation, about zły of an inch on their major axis, while I saw 
nothing that could have been over yg Of an inch. The struc- 
ture of the testis was similar to that which I have seen in the tes- 
tes of the cod, perch, smelt, cat, deer, rooster, monkey; dog and 
man. On teasing it out under a Tolles one-fifth, I saw what I am 
confident were spermatozoa, although I could not distinguish the 
tails. The heads were oval and from one-half to one-third the 
size of those of the smelt, or about 9355 of an inch in length; 
they had an independent motion, changing their position on the 
slide without reference to any current in the water in which the 
tissue was placed, and this motion was wholly different in its 
character from the vibrations of the Brownian movement.” 
Prof. Packard examined independently of and in company with 
Mr. Kingsley, preparations made by himself, and found scattered 
through the tissues, nucleated and nucleolated testis cells, of the 
same appearance as those of the animals above named, which were 
kindly obtained by Prof. Pierce. Moreover, Prof. Packard found 
two mother-cells, containing several immature nucleated sperma- 
tozoa. So that after the examination of about five hundred 
female eels and three males, we are glad to be able to affirm 
r 
