448 PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 
recess only was full of sperms and the same was true of an annulus four 
and a half hours after laying. In three annuli twenty-seven, sixteen, 
and ten minutes respectively after actual laying, there was much 
sperm in the recess, some in the posterior part of the tube and some 
spreading over the surface of the annulus. 
In the annulus of a female killed in boiling water while laying (shown 
in figure 5, pi. 43, but with no sperm or wax indicated), there was much 
sperm inside the tube and recess and along the suture and spreading 
over the adjacent parts of the promontory as well as aggregated at the 
sperm angle. When first fixed, a white coagulum of sperm was seen 
projecting from the suture. In this case sperm from a cut up vas 
deferens had been placed upon the eggs to obtain views of their union 
and this may have got onto the annulus and vitiated the above obser¬ 
vation, but still the main mass of sperm seen there probably came out 
of the annulus. 
To the above evidence that sperm issues out of the slits of the annulus 
at the period of egg-laying, it may be objected that this was not seen 
in life and that the methods employed caused the sperm to ooze out. 
The pressure of the knife in removing the annulus sometimes causes 
the annulus to gape open along the suture and again after hot liquids 
the suture was sometimes widely opened as in figure 10 (pi. 43) which 
was from the female put into boiling water twenty-four hours after 
laying. Though an abnormal amount of gaping of the suture and 
some oozing out of the sperm may have been thus brought about in 
the methods of preparation, this did not apply to the entire phenomena, 
since the same general results were got when heat and pressure were 
avoided and various other fixatives employed. 
If it be granted that there is a normal discharge of sperm from the 
tube through the slits to the surface of the annulus at the time of laying, 
the mode in which this is brought about and the way in which the 
sperm is tided over this critical period to reach the egg without injury 
from the water, are questions upon which some light is shed by the 
following observations and experiments. 
The habits of the female at the period of laying, as elsewhere, 
described (Andrews, : 04 and :06a), are briefly stated as follows. She 
seeks a protected locality and for some days assiduously cleans all the 
ventral side of the abdomen and the region about the annulus. Then 
standing high up upon her legs she allows the secretion of the “cement 
glands” of the ventral side of the abdomen to run down over the 
