ABSTRACT
It was intended that this chapter would be confined to a review of ultrastructural works on bird spermatozoa and phylogenetic implications but it soon became apparent that the work, nearly a century old, of Gustaf Retzius (1909, 1911, 1912) and to a lesser extent the earlier publications of Emil Ballowitz (1886, 1888, 1913) still comprised a large proportion of our knowledge of avian sperm morphology. I have therefore included their light microscopical observations, and pertinent drawings of Retzius, with the later ultrastructural works in this chapter. Retzius’ drawings are comparable with those of Ernst Haekel (1862) for the extraordinary visual acuity, the excellence of the optical systems, and the dedication of these authors, on which their production depended. The light microscopical investigations of McFarlane (1963) are also of great value. The illustrations by Ballowitz are drawn to a smaller scale than those of Retzius and, though providing significant information, are not reproduced in the present work. Avian species examined for sperm morphology by Ballowitz, Retzius and McFarlane are tablulated in Tables 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3 respectively.
