ENTOZOA — GORDIACEA. 
295 
the cellular tissue recognised by the reporter. We may thus consider 
this cellular parenchyma, as two tubes glued close together. They are 
in the male individual the testes, in the female the ovarian tubes. The 
construction of the walls agrees generally in both sexes ; but still 
there is a certain specific difference. The walls of the testicular 
tubes are entirely colourless, and consist of a double layer of cells, 
lying close upon each other, which Berthold held to be egg-cells. 
Each cell has a distinct round kernel. The form of the individual 
cells is always oblong, with rounded corners. Its thickness is only half 
its breadth. Sometimes they contain a greater or lesser quantity 
of a very fine-grained mass. The cellular walls of these tubes have 
an extraordinary resemblance to the parenchyma of a plant. The two 
cavities of the testicular tubes contain a very fine-grained milk-white 
mass, which, on pressure, oozes out at the opening of the caudal fork. 
This may, therefore, certainly be considered as the sexual opening. The 
granular mass of the testes, when viewed by the microscope, consists of 
very small cells, between which, when taken from the lower part, oblong 
corpuscles, thinned at one end, appear, of the length of 0.076'" to 0.089'", 
and are evidently spermatozoa. In the female individuals, the walls 
of the ovarian tubes are much thinner, consisting only of one simple 
layer of colourless cells. These have distinctly kernels, and here and 
there a fine-grained mass within them ; they are not oblong, but rather 
spherical. The hollow cavity of each tube contains an innumer- 
able quantity of eggs, glued together like bunches of grapes ; each egg 
has a defined nucleus. In the upper portion, the individual eggs, 
which compose the bunches, are of an oval or pear shape ; lower down, 
they become more romided, encompassed by a clear space, through which 
they again become glued together, before and beside each other, as longer 
and shorter strings of eggs ; the nucleus cannot now be recognised, 
as perhaps the white granular yolky mass conceals it. At the under- 
most end of the cavity of the body, in the female, was found a thin-skinned 
bag, of two lines long, filled with a great number of oblong moveable 
bodies, resembling the spermatozoa of the male Gordii. A milky mass 
oozed out, on pressure, from the opening found at the blunted posterior 
end of the body in the female, and which consisted of eggs and lively sper- 
matozoa, so that the bag may be compared to a receptaculum seminis ; 
but the reporter must add, that the individual eggs far exceeded in size 
the small cells of the testicular contents, and the latter certainly are only 
undeveloped spermatozoa. 
The description which Dujardin has given of a male Gordius aqua- 
ticus agrees very well with that of the reporter (Ann. d. Sc. Nat. 1842, 
t. xviii. p. 142). 
Dujardin saw no aperture for the mouth in this worm, which was not 
the case with the reporter. It is, however, extremely difficult to find, and 
339 
