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REPORT ON ZOOLOGY, MDCCCXLII : 
in the white semi-transparent arch. The intestine is a very thin 
simple canal, which runs on the abdominal side of the walls of the body, 
and ends in a very short cloaca, common to it and the female sexual 
openings. A thin vessel winds along with this intestine, which, arrived 
beneath, discharges itself into the common canal of the two female sexual 
organs, and is looked upon by Berthold as a testis. External organs of 
copulation are wanting. Berthold describes, as the female sexual organs, 
two wide tubes running along the whole body, filling up for the most 
part its walls, which commence above and near the beginning of the 
alimentary canal, and internally are united to each other. About one- 
fourth inch from the anus, they join into a common canal, forming a 
cloaca with the end of the intestine. These ovarian tubes are only 
loosely united to the neighbouring wall of the body, and have a very 
regular articulated appearance, like the body of a tape-worm. The walls 
are composed of two cuticles, the exterior (the firmer) forming the tape- 
worm-like rings, while the interior seems very loose, and presents a 
tissue of meshes like a spider’s web, with very fine egg cells. These 
meshes must be vessels. Berthold has observed numerous little balls 
come out from the anus, which are composed each of an immense number 
of eggs. In the early part of spring the Gordii contain no eggs, but a 
scanty milky fluid, composed of very small granules. 
Such is Berthold’s account. With regard to the nervous system, the 
reporter has had as little success as he had. His longitudinal vessels 
were not to be found ; and the cuticulo-vascular net, described in con- 
junction with them, is probably nothing else but the fibrous tissue lying 
under the epidermis. The two tubes, running within the cavity of the 
body, on the abdominal side, the reporter has never missed either in 
male or female individuals : that lying next the abdominal wall was al- 
ways much stronger than the other. Both had fleshy walls, and con- 
tained a clear fluid, mixed here and there with small grains. The 
reporter could not discover, either the superior origin, or the under end 
of the two simple thick-walled tubes: That one of these may be an 
intestinal canal is probable ; but the reporter cannot find a single proof 
that the other is a testis. The greatest part of the cavity of the body is 
filled up by a peculiar cellular tissue, which leaves free a channel-formed 
space on the abdominal side, within which the two simple tubes just 
mentioned run ; besides, two hollow cavities stretch through the cellular 
tissue longitudinally, until they approach the posterior end of the body, 
where both unite into one, and discharge themselves at the opening of 
the after part of the body. The reporter questions, whether the cellular 
tissue forms the two thick-walled tubes lying close beside each other in 
the mesial line, and passing into a common tube posteriorly. According 
to Berthold’s description of the female sexual organs, such might actually 
be the case, for the double egg-tubes mentioned by him, are evidently 
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