I. ANATOMY. — The Weberian corpuscle occurs only in the class Mamtnalia, where we meet with a greater complication of the sexual apparatus than in any other group of the Vertebrata. Thus the Mammalia are the only vertebrate animals whose females possess a real vagina and uterus. What we desig nate by this name in some other Vertebrate cannot be regarded as morphological equi valents of the vagina and uterus of Mammalia.
Man.—The Weberian corpuscle is a small flask-shaped vesicle, with a rounded blind end and a narrow neck directed downwards, placed on the hinder wall of the urethra, under the verumontanum, and covered by the prostate. The middle lobe of this gland limits the upper end of the corpuscle. The length varies, but is commonly 3, 4 or 6 lines; the breadth at the upper end is 2 lines, but it sometimes attains a more considerable size. Thus Adamst men tions an instance in which it had a length of an inch, and by its upper end, which projected free, was placed upon the dorsal surface of the middle lobe of the prostate. And in the hypospadian described by Theile$ ; its size was yet more considerable (11 inches).
The constricted neck sometimes forms half of the whole corpuscle, and is, according to Ihischke§, sometimes separated from the upper dilated part by a kind of constriction. The under end opens by a small elongated oval aperture (of it. to line) on the anterior declivity of the verumontanum. The orifices of the two •ejaculatory ducts * lie right and left of the opening, at a very small distance from it, usually somewhat higher, yet never quite symmetrical: they are sometimes close to it, or somewhat behind it. These ducts pass up ( the sides of the Weberian organ, and receive it between them, being bound up with it by :imolar tissue.
ducts. But at all events this is" a rare ano maly, which has been since observed by Adams only.* In a case mentioned by Hyrtlt, there was a simultaneous deficiency of both vesicular seminales, and the ejaculatory ducts descended into the upper end of a'single receptacle,which was one inch long and seven lines broad. But though Hyrtl and Theile regarded this structure as certainly an uterus masculinus, and thus as a Weberian organ ; yet the in sertion of the ejaculatory ducts at the upper end is a circumstance which contradicts their view. As we shall hereafter show, such a con
nection is a morphological impossibility. Even where an immediate communication between the vasa deferentia and the Weberian cor puscle exists (as is normally the case in the hare), it occurs only at the inferior extremity of the latter organ.
Quldrumana. — In the Apes a Weberian In the Weberian corpuscle of two new born infants, H. Meckel t found a special variety of structure. It became thinner in its ascent, so as to be only permeable by a hog's bristle, and ended as a solid thread, which separated by bifurcating.
Morgagni 1: was the first who accurately described the Weberian organ, which he also probably discovered. Of fifteen human bodies which he examined with this object, he found it in fourteen. It is possible that in the one remaining case he overlooked it, since it sometimes happens that its mouth is but small, or is even altogether deficient, as Huschke has frequently ascertained it in healthy and robust suicides. Nevertheless it is not improbable that in some cases there is a complete absence of the Weberian corpuscle; the less so that we sometimes verify such dif rences in other animals. In two of these fifteen cases, Morgagni found that the utri eulus, instead of opening by a special aperture, communicated with one of the ejaculatory corpuscle appears very general. It here in closes a small, narrow and flat canal, which above has a -blind extremity, and scarcely possesses a greater width than at its lower end. Its length is about two lines. Its mouth, in the uro-genital canal, is surrounded as with a wall by an annular swelling, which has some resemblance to a small os and in which one may also, generally, dis tinguish an anterior and posterior lip. La Mediately behind this opening are the mouths of the ejaculatory ducts, the lower ends of which are apposed to the hinder wall of the corpuscle, and are covered by the 'prostate.