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BARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



THE SQUARE-TAILED WORM. 

 Bv THE Rev. Hilderic Friend, F.L.S. 



President of the Wesley Scientific Society, Author 

 of ' Flowers and Flower Lore.' 



TO anyone except an enthusiastic lover of nature 

 the idea of grubbing among the grass, stones, 

 mud and rubbish in search of such unattractive 

 creatures as worms must be perfectly monstrous, and 

 we quite sympathize with those matter-of-fact folk 

 who take the worm-hunter to be a candidate for the 

 lunatic asylum. We do not exactly see, however, 

 why it is worse to dig for worms for scientific than 

 for piscatorial uses, and in all fairness the angler and 

 the naturalist should be made to sail in the same boat 

 in this respect ; if indeed the knight of the rod, who 

 merely sacrifices the poor worms for his own delecta- 

 tion is worthy a place beside the knight of the scalpel 

 whose aim is to further the interests of scientific 

 research and extend our knowledge of God and His 

 works. 



Among our native worms there is one with a square 

 tail {Allurus tdraedrns, Eisen) whose story has never 

 yet been fully told by any English author so far as I 

 am aware. It has been somewhat fully studied on 

 the Continent, and at least one English writer has 

 given us details of its anatomy, but so far all has been 

 of a technical, unpopular character. When I speak 

 of Allurus as the square-tailed worm I wish it to be 

 understood that the term must be used in a modified 

 sense, as we have one or two other worms which 

 sometimes present this peculiarity, but not in so 

 marked a degree. It was on account of the peculiar 



tailed worm. Duges the same year gave an account 

 of it in the Annales des sciences naturelles under the 

 title of Enterion Aniphisbana. His reason for 



Fig. 56.— Anterior portion seen from above (dorsal) : pr, pros 



^..^^■Bi 



• Fig. 55. — Allurus. 



shape of the hinder half or posterior end that the 

 worm, when separated from the old genus Lumbricus, 

 because of the male pore being on the thirteenth 

 segment, and made the type of a new genus, was 

 named AUurus from the Greek words alios, another 

 or different, and oura, tail. I shall endeavour to 

 present what I have to say to the reader under three 

 heads, in which the History, Description, and Distri- 

 bution of the worm will be set forth. 



I. THE HISTORY OF ALLURUS. 



Allurus was apparently unknown to Linnaeus, the 

 father of modern science, who was very poorly in- 

 formed in worm-lore. Savigny, who discarded the 

 Linnean term Lumbricus, and adopted the Grrecised 

 word Enterion (from the Enteron of Aristotle), is the 

 first author to give us any information respecting it. 

 In Cuvier's Histoire des progres des sciences nalurelles, 

 he calls the worm Enterion Ictraedritin, or the square- 



Fig. S7- — Allurus: segments 1-18. a, parasitic vorticella ; 

 d, dorsal pores ; cr, crop ; c^, calciferous gland ; />•, pros- 

 tomium ; £^z, gizzard ; inj>, male pore. 



adopting the latter name is to be found in the fact 

 that the worm can go as readily backwards as for- 

 wards, after the fashion of the serpent of which 



