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The males give out masses of sperm, and the females discharge ova in such quantity that many of them stick to the fibrils about their mouths. Both kinds of cells pass first into the mantle-cavity after the opening of the gonads, proceed through the gill-clefts into the branchial gut, and are discharged from this through the mouth. The ova are simply round cells.
In certain male cuttle-fishes, in the breeding season, one of the arms develops in a curious fashion into a long coiled whip-lash, and in the act of breeding may then be transferred to the mantle-cavity of the female. Cuvier himself knew nothing of the nature or the function of this separated arm, and indeed, if I am not mistaken, it was he who mistook it for a parasitic worm.
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