Summary. Hamster epididymal spermatozoa do not normally acquire the ability to penetrate eggs until they reach the proximal portion of the cauda epididymidis. Careful ligation of the lower corpus epididymidis for 3 to 5 days produced some improvement in the motility but a failure of the fertilizing ability of spermatozoa withheld proximal to the ligature. These findings are compared briefly with those in the rabbit, in the light of the character of the epithelium in the different macroscopic regions of the epididymis in the two species.

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Objective To assess the mean time to cancer-speci®c death in patients with prostate cancer, using a minimum follow-up of 14 years at one institution, and thus evaluate the minimum life-expectancy for eligibility for radical surgery, radiotherapy and, implicitly, prostate speci®c antigen (PSA) screening. Patients and methods The tumour registry of the authors' institution was searched for the records of patients with prostate cancer (stages T1 and nonmetastatic T2±3) over the period 1976±1983, chosen to give a maximum follow-up with suf®cient numbers of patients. Kaplan±Meier curves and the mean time to death to 1995 for palpable and impalpable cancers were calculated. Deaths not from cancer and from unknown causes were censored. Patients still alive were also censored, except for in the calculation of mean time to death. Results Patients with both stages of disease had a steep increase in mortality at 16 years. The mean (SEM) time to prostate cancer-speci®c death for T1 disease was 17 (1.8) years and for T2-T3 (palpable) was 11.7 (1.2 years). Conclusion These results suggest that, if there is to be one at all, the upper age limit for prostate cancer screening should be 62 years.

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