POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
4 264 
The 'kidneys are paired, the ureters entering a very small urine 
bladder at the back of, and partly confluent with, the rectum. 
The generative organs are paired. Their products pass out- 
wards by a paired oviduct or vas deferens. These ducts are 
entirely separate from the ovaries or testicles, each having a 
distinct abdominal orifice immediately below the diaphragma. 
They accompany the ureters in their posterior course, but are 
nowhere confluent with them, and terminate in a common 
opening into the cloacal dilatation, immediately in front of the 
uretral orifice. The ovaries are elongate bands, their outer 
surface being crossed by a great number of lamellae, the bearers 
of the stroma in which the ova are developed. The ova are 
in very great number, and when mature drop into the cavity 
of the peritoneum, as in Salmonoids ; but instead of being ex- 
pelled at once by the peritoneal openings, they travel along a 
shallow gutter forwards , enter the much convoluted oviducts, 
where they receive a gelatinous covering, like the eggs of 
Batrachians, and are finally expelled through the cloaca. The 
testicles and vasa deferentia are analogous to the female organs 
with regard to position, form, and orifices. 
Such are the principal points in the organisation of the Bar- 
ramunda; and it remains now to add some remarks on its 
affinities and on the bearings which the acquaintance of this 
singular type has upon the advancement of science. 
1. When we direct our enquiry at first to recent fishes, there 
cannot be any doubt as regards the close relationship between 
Ceratodus and Lepidosiren. The latter had been regarded by 
Joh. Muller (and by most subsequent ichthyologists) as the type 
of a separate sub-class — Dipnoi — which he distinguished from 
the Ganoids by the presence of a pair of longitudinal valves in 
the conus arteriosus of the heart, the valves being arranged in 
transverse series in Ganoid and Plagiostomous fishes. We see 
now that the valvular arrangement in Lepidosiren is merely a 
modification of the Granoid heart, and that the characteristic fea- 
ture of the latter consists in the presence of a pulsating third divi- 
sion — Qie, conus arteriosus. Therefore we are compelled to aban- 
don the sub-class, Dipnoi , and to refer it as a sub-order to the Gra- 
noids, with its definition altered thus : The Dipnoi are Ganoid 
fishes with the nostrils within the mouth, with paddles sup- 
ported by an axial skeleton, with lungs and gills, with a noto- 
chordal skeleton, and without branchiostegals. 
2. But it appears to me that Ganoids and Chondroptery- 
gians (sharks and rays) are much more closely allied to each 
other than either of them to the sub-class of Teleosteans, which 
comprises the majority of the fishes of the present epoch, and 
the members of which have, instead of a contractile conus arte- 
riosus, simply a non-contractile swelling of the aorta, separated 
