6 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
Historical Summary. — The vesicle was first described by Kupffer* * * § 
in 1868 in Gasterosteus aculeatus , Gobius minutus, and Gobius 
niger. He described it as lying beneath the intestine, stated that 
it was lined with cells, and considered that it was homologous with 
the allantois of the Amniota. In later papers Kupffer came to the 
conclusion that the vesicle was connected with the development of 
the urinary organs and ducts. 
Balfour, in his Comparative Embryology, considered the vesicle 
as homologous with the post-anal vesicle in Elasmobranchs. He 
gave no reasons for this view, intending probably to investigate the 
point at some future time. 
In 1880f M. Henneguy published, in the Bulletin de la Societe 
Philomathigue de Paris , some researches on the development of 
the Perch, in which he announced that he believed he had found 
an opening from Kupffer’s vesicle to the exterior, and considered 
that the structure represented the primitive intestine of Cyclo- 
stomi and Batrachia, its opening being the anus of Rusconi. In 
1883 a paper on Teleostean embryology, by Messrs Kingsley and 
Conn,;|; appeared in the Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural 
History. These authors had studied chiefly the pelagic ova of 
Ctenolabrus, one of the Wrasses, They trusted entirely to optical 
sections of the living embryo. They devote two short paragraphs 
to Kupffer’s vesicle ; they describe its origin from a number of small 
granules which coalesce, say nothing of its relation to the layers, 
though their figure is correct as far as it goes, and think that Balfour’s 
view is much more probable than Henneguy’s. 
Finally, Professor A. Agassiz and C. 0. Whitman have recently 
published some researches on the development of pelagic Teleostean 
eggs carried on at the Newport Marine Laboratory. § Here, again, 
ova of Ctenolabrus were principally studied, Kupffer’s vesicle is 
dealt with in some detail ; the description of its origin given by 
Kingsley and Conn is confirmed, if by granules are understood 
small spaces ; the vesicle is correctly described as lying beneath the 
chorda and entodermic stratum, and as having no sort of connection 
* Arch. f. mile. Anat. , Bd. iv. 
t Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. , ser. 5, vol. vi. 
$ Yol. iii. No. vi., April 1883 
§ Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts and Sciences , vol. xx. Aug. 1884. 
