454 
ADAM SEDGWICK. 
This fact would seem to imply that fresh spermatozoa pass 
each year into the ovaries. This brings me to the question of 
the manner in which the male discharges his function. The 
vesiculae seminales (testes of Moseley and Balfour) are almost 
empty of spermatozoa in the months of February, March, and 
April. At the end of April, however, they begin to swell 
again and contain spermatozoa, which increase in number as 
time goes on, until, in October, they are fully distended with 
spermatozoa in all stages of development. There seems to be no 
functional intromittent organ, but the male deposits little oval 
spermatophores quite casually on any part of the body of the 
female, and, for all that I know, of the male also ; e. g. I have 
often seen them on the head. How these little packets of 
spermatozoa get into the vagina, and then up the uteri, 
which are always full of embryos, I cannot conceive. The 
spermatozoa exhibit a certain amount of vibratory movement, 
and no doubt, once within the vagina, they are set free from 
the spermatophor and make their way up the female genera- 
tive tube, between the embryos and the uterine walls. Inas- 
much as the deposition of spermatophores lasts from June 
until January, each female probably has a large number of 
spermatophores deposited on her, and some of these are prob- 
ably near the generative opening, and are, somehow or another, 
transported through it into the vagina. 
Fertilisation is apparently effected in the ovary. I have 
never seen spermatozoa in any part of the female apparatus 
except in the ovaries, and in small numbers in the upper end 
of the oviducts at the time when the ova are entering the 
latter. 
The ripe, and probably fertilised, ova pass into the oviduct 
in April, while the uterus is still full of embryos almost ready 
for birth. Segmentation and the early stages of development 
take place during the passage of the ova down the oviduct. 
In May the young of the previous year are born. Into the 
uterus, thus emptied, the young ova pass, and establish them- 
selves in the positions which they maintain until the following 
May, when they are born. 
