The preceding remarks upon the functional reproductive powers of reputed true hermaph rodites have been meant to apply only to the supposed perfection of one order of their sexual organs. It becomes a still more interesting question whether it ever occurs that in any ab normal hermaphrodite among the more perfect tribes of animals, both kinds of sexual parts may be found in so perfectly developed a state as to enable the individual to complete the sexual act within its own body ; or, in other words, to impregnate and be impregnated by itself. Though we have assuredly no positive proof to furnish* that a hermaphrodite so phy siologically perfect has ever yet been observed, and should very strongly doubt its occurrence from tho almost universal imperfection, in an anatomical point of view, of the malformed or gans, yet we have, on the other hand, no very ra tional ground, except that of the experience of all observers up to the present date, for denying entirely and unconditionally the utter possibi lity of it. And perhaps we should look upon this possibility with a less degree of scepticism when we consider that a double hermaphrodi tism exists as the normal sexual condition of some of the lower tribes of animated beings, and at the same time take into account the fact of the more or less direct communication which has been generally found to exist between the female uterus and the male passages, in cases of lateral and of complex hermaphroditism in the human subject and in quadrupeds.
In one of the cases of hermaphroditism in the goat, previously quoted from Mayer, and where there were present two male testicles, epididymes, vasa defercntia, and vesiculw semi nales, and a female vagina, uterus and Fallo pian tubes, with a body at the abdominal ex tremity of one of these tubes that was supposed by Mayer to resemble a collection of Graafian vesicles, the male vasa deferentia opened into the female vagina; and its cavity with that of the uterus, and of all the male sexual canals, was distended with a whitish fluid of the odour and colour of male semen, and containing, ac cording to Bergmann, the chemical principle proper to that secretion. It is not, therefore, altogether without some appearance of founda tion in fact, that Mayer has added to the history of this case the following problematical remark: " Fuit ergo revere hermaphroditus semetipsum fincundare studens."•
In a similar strain Dr. Ilarlan has added to the account that he has given of the very com plete case of hermaphroditism already men tioned as met with in the Borneo ourang outang, the following observations and queries. " Admitting," he remarks, " what in reality appeared to he the fact, that all the essential organs of both sexes were present in this indi vidual, had the subject lived to adult age, most interesting results might have been elicited. Could not the animal have been impregnated by a male individual, by rupturing the mem brane closing the vulva ? or by masturbation, might not the animal have impregnated itself? by this means exciting the testicles to discharge their seminal liquor into its own vagina. The imperfection of the urethra most probably would have prevented the animal from ejecting the semen into the vagina of another indivi dual ."t It has been sometimes urged as an argument conclusively illustrative of the fiict of a double hermaphrodite impregnating itself, that in the hermaphrodite Gastrophaga pini described by Scopoli,t the insect is stated to have been seen to advance its penis and copulate with its own female organs; and afterwards, we are inform ed, the female side laid eggs from which young caterpillars were produced. Before, however, admitting this case to present an incontroverti ble instance of absolute het maphroditism, with the functions of the two sets of sexual organs existing in a perfect condition upon the same individual, it is necessary to recollect a possible source of fallacy in this circumstance, that female Gastrophagi have been observed to lay fertile eggs, although they had not had pre viously any connection with the male, as re marked by Professor Baster* in one instance in a female Gastrophaga guercifolia, and in ano ther in the Gastraphaga pini by Suckow.t The same Fact is further alleged to have been ob served in some few instances by Pallas, Trevi ranus, Bernouilli, and others,t in regard to in dividuals belonging to some other of the higher orders of insects and animals, as in the Limnaus auricularis§ and Iklis viviparall among 111°1 lusca, thus bringing them in this respect into analogy with the Aphides and Cyprides.