780 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
Female Reproductive Organs. 
The female reproductive organs of the dragonflies have al¬ 
ready received considerable attention. The earliest real an¬ 
atomical account to which any reference can he found is that 
by Rathke (21). Calvert (5) calls attention to the fact that 
he was unable to examine this paper and knows of it only 
through the references of others. Requests to the libraries of 
several of our largest Universities failed to obtain this work. 
Rathke was followed in his work by Siebold (26), Palmen (16) 
and Fenard (11). 
Siebold (26) has shown the presence of copulatory pouch 
and seminal recepticle and, in fact, describes the latter in the 
species of dragonfly which is the subject of this paper. He 
says: u Libellula J+ maculata bi'etet eine Abweichung dar, in 
den Hire beiden Samen kapseln nur zwei ldeine Blindsachen 
vorstellen”. 
The two ovaries occupy relatively the same position in the 
female that the testes do in the male. They begin in the first 
abdominal segment—the terminal filaments extend forward in¬ 
to the thorax—and end in the middle of the sixth segment; at 
this point the oviducts, which have for some distance been 
along the outer margin of the ovaries (fig. 51, Odt.), con¬ 
tinue alone to join finally near the anterior margin of the 
eighth segment, to form a common oviduct. This passes into 
the vagina which continues to the outlet. 
The ojiening of the vagina is ventral on the posterior margin 
of the eighth segment. From a posterior view the opening 
(vulva) is shaped like a capital T, the upright of the T in¬ 
stead of having a short horizontal bar for its base has an oval 
shaped opening (fig. 50). In the vagina, when empty, are 
numerous large and small longitudinal folds in the wall the 
two ventral ones of which are much larger than the others 
(fig. 54). These folds make the vagina appear very irregular 
in all transverse sections. Lining the vagina is a thick cuti- 
cular layer. 
