For a considerable period the front end of the Oviduct does not undergo important changes; the hind end, however, comes into connection with the extreme end of the alimentary canal. The two Oviducts do not open together into the cloaca, though, as my sections prove, their openings are very close together. The whole Oviduct, as might be expected, shares in the general growth, and its lumen becomes in both sexes very considerably greater than it was before.
It is difficult to define the period at which I find these changes accomplished without giving drawings of the whole embryo. The stage is one considerably after the external gills have appeared, but before the period at which the growth of the olfactory bulbs renders the head of an elongated shape.
During the same period the Wolffian duct has undergone most important changes. It has commenced to bud off diverticula, which subsequently become the tubules of the Wolffian body (vide fig. 13, _wd_). I am fairly satisfied that the tubules are really budded off, and are not formed independently in the mesoblast. The Dog-fish agrees so far with Birds, where I have also no doubt the tubules of the Wolffian body are formed as diverticula from the Wolffian duct.
The Wolffian ducts have also become much longer than the Oviduct, and are now found behind the anus, though they do not extend as far forward as does the Oviduct.
They have further acquired a communication with the Oviduct, in the form of a narrow duct passing from each of them into an Oviduct a short way before the latter opens into the cloacal dilatation of the alimentary canal.
The canals formed by the primitive involution leading from the pleuro-peritoneal cavity into the Wolffian duct have become much more elongated, and at the same time narrower. One of these is shewn in fig. 13, _pwd_.
Any doubt which could possibly be entertained as to the true character of the ducts whose development I have described is entirely removed by the development of the tubules of the Wolffian body. In the still later stage than this further proofs are furnished involving the function of the Oviduct. At the period when the olfactory lobes have become so developed as to render the head of the typical elongated shape of the adult, I find that the males and females can be distinguished by the presence in the former of the clasping appendages[16]. I find at this stage that in the female the front ends of the Oviducts have approached the middle line, dilated considerably, and commenced to exhibit at their front ends the peculiarities of the adult. In the male they are much less conspicuous, though still present.