The comparatively small number is explained by the certainty with which each of them reaches the ovum, and the large size may be accounted for in part by the small number which suffices, and which, therefore, admits of the male cell also carrying a considerable portion of the material for the building up of the embryo. Probably, however, the thickness and firmness of the covering of the ovum has something to do with it, for it has no opening for the entrance of the male cell, and it is fully hardened by the time fertilization takes place. Perhaps nowhere can we see more clearly how every little detail of the structure of the organism is dominated by the principle of adaptation than in the arrangements for fertilization, and notably in those which obtain in the Ostracods. I pass by the complicated apparatus for copulation, since we do not yet understand it fully in all particulars. According to my own investigations and those of my former students, Dr. Stuhlmann and Dr. Schwarz, the essential point seems to be that the colossally large zoosperms, which show no activity within the body of the male, leave it one at a time, so to speak, in single file. In copulation they are pressed out singly, one after the other, through a very fine tube, and then they enter, still singly, through the reproductive aperture of the female into an equally fine passage with spiral windings, through which they ultimately reach a roomy pear-shaped receptacle, the 'receptaculum seminis' of the female. There they lie in a long band composed of several hundreds, and only now attain their full maturity by throwing off an outer cuticle--moulting, so to speak. It is only when they get into a fluid medium that they show the power of undulatory movement, feeble at first, but gradually more energetic and more violent. And these movements enable them to penetrate like gimlets into the calcareous egg-shell. In the normal course it happens that when a mature ovum is deposited from the opening of the oviduct, one of the giant zoosperms at the same time, or shortly afterwards, leaves the 'receptaculum seminis' of the female by way of the spiral passage, and reaches the exterior just behind the ovum. The actual process of penetration has not been observed as yet, but the zoosperm has been seen at a slightly later stage spirally coiled inside the ovum. [Illustration: FIG. 65. Copulation in a Daphnid (Lyncæid). Emptying of the sperm (_sp_) into the brood-chamber of the female (♀). _abd_ ♂, the abdomen of the male. Magnified 100 times.] In these Ostracods the sperms are often visible with the naked eye, and in some species they are twice the length of the animal; they are thus emphatically giant cells, which can develop a very considerable boring power. In respect to the various adaptations of the sperm-cells to the conditions of fertilization there is hardly any group more interesting than the water-fleas or Daphnids.