592 



requires so far modification, as that Blackwall had really advanced 

 a good way on the road to the same discovery. In a paper bearing 

 the title, "A succinct review of recent attempts to explain several 

 remarkable facts in the physiology of spiders and insects", in Journ. 

 of the Proceed, of the Linn. Soc, Zool., VII, pp. 157, 158, Blackwall 

 shows how Dctges. '), in order to explain the possibility of the palpi 

 being really organs of copulation, though the testes debouch on 

 the under side of the abdomen, had proposed the question: "le con- 

 joncteur [the genital bulb] ferait-il alternativement l'office de siphon 

 absorbant et d'organe ejaculateur?", a question, which Duges an- 

 swers in the following terms: "Cela se peut, mais je n'ai rien pu ob- 

 server, qui justifiat directement cette conjecture". Blackwall ad- 

 duces further a short notice of Menge's well-known observations on 

 this subject, which notice he had found in the Reports on Zoology 

 for 1843 and 1844, p. 195, published by the Ray Society, and ac- 

 cording to which notice "the spoon-shaped palps of the males ave in 

 fact the copulative organs, with which they take the semen from 

 the appropriate openings of the seminal ducts on the base of the 

 abdomen, and transfer it to the sexual openings of the female". 

 Blackwall had not himself seen Menge's work, and was not there- 

 fore aware that in the above-mentioned notice the observations of 

 that author are not quite correctly understood; and what Blackwall 

 states that he had himself observed is therefore so much the more 

 interesting, in as much as that it perfectly agrees with the obser- 

 vations of Menge and Ausserer. Blackwall's words are as follows: 

 "A male Agelena labyrinthica , confined in a phial , spun a small 

 web, and among the lines of which it was composed, I perceived 

 that a drop of white milk-like fluid was suspended: how it had been 

 deposited there I cannot explain , but I observed that the spider, by 

 the alternate application of its palpal organs, speedily imbibed the 

 whole of it. Perhaps the only safe conclusion to be drawn from this 

 very remarkable circumstance, taken in connexion with the pre- 

 viously well-ascertained office of these parts, is that it affords a 

 complete answer in the affirmative to the question asked by M. 



aufnahmen, bis das gauze tropfchen verschwunden war... Nach der aufnabrne des 

 samens in die tasterkolben naherte sich das mannchen wieder das weibeben und 

 vollzog rait iibertragung desselben in die samentaschen' die begattung". — Conf. 

 id., ibid., IV, pp. 281, 284 (Agcdena labyrinthica and A. similis). 



l) Observ. sur les Aran., in Ann. d. Sc. Nat., 2e Ser. , Zool., VI, pp. 

 189, 190. 



