HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



271 



If a worm is opened laterally, and the internal 

 organs removed, so as to leave only the body-wall, it 

 will be possible so to display this portion of the 

 animal as to see the whole series of pores in regular 

 succession. It will be easy then to observe that they 

 are connected with each other by a kind of tube 

 which runs right along the back of the worm. I am 

 a little doubtful whether this is what Uhde refers to 

 when he says that the epithelium of the body-cavity 

 passes across the muscular layers and meets the 

 cuticle around the edge of the pore. The pore has a 

 special set of muscle-bundles which form its sphincter 

 muscle. 



Uhde does not think there is the slightest 

 connection between the pores and the nephridia, 

 which are excretory in their function. Yet, in a 

 sense, the dorsal pores play their part in the excretory 

 process, since the fluid contained in the coelom, or 

 body-cavity, as well as certain other substances which 

 in some species of earthworm are coloured, can be 

 caused to exude through them. Sometimes the 

 exudation is in drops, but some foreign species are 

 able to squirt it to a distance of a foot, much as Peri- 

 patus does. In these cases the process is perhaps 

 protective. 



It is to Professor Busk that we are indebted, 

 through Professor Lankester, for one of the best 

 accounts of these apertures in English. In a remark- 

 able paper on the earthworm, published by the latter 

 in 1865, we have an illustration of the integument of a 

 worm with all the various pores found on the dorsal 

 surface carefully represented. " One of these orifices, 

 situated in the median dorsal line of the segment, 

 appears always to be larger than the others, and 

 penetrates directly to the perivisceral cavity. That 

 these openings form a very ready and frequent means 

 of escape to the colourless fluid may be ascertained by 

 handling a large earthworm, when some considerable 

 quantity is nearly invariably found to escape from its 

 dorsal surface." Nor is this all. Professor Busk says 

 that the fluid expressed from these pores was of a 

 dirty greyish colour, thin and opaque. Examined 

 under the microscope it contained numerous spherical 

 particles and pyriform granular bodies, besides 

 irregular organic particles. 



This coloured fluid differs with the species of worm 

 examined. In some, as the brandling and turgid 

 worm it is yellow ; in others, as the mucous worm, it is 

 white ; while the red worm yields two kinds of 

 colouring matter. 



Notwithstanding the large amount of attention 

 which has been paid to earthworms during the past 

 century, we are even now very badly informed on 

 many points connected with their economy, and there 

 is great need that someone with the necessary leisure, 

 means, and scientific training should investigate some 

 of the details more fully. I have been able to make 

 great progress with my work on the distribution and 

 revision of the British LumbricidK — till recently 



almost totally neglected — and hope by the due publi- 

 cation of the new and interesting results to stimulate 

 further research on the part of others. 



Meanwhile, so far as the dorsal pores are concerned, 

 they appear to be for the emission rather than the 

 introduction of fluids, and are apparently lubricative, 

 excretory and protective. Their homology with 

 certain organs found in other Annelids does not seem 

 to have been carefully ascertained — at any rate I 

 know of nothing on the subject in English. 



ANIMALS AND MEDICINE., 



By HULWIDGEON. 



Ungulata. 



HORSE. — Among the more peculiar, not to say 

 nasty, subjects of Bate's " Dispensatory," was 

 an article which, as a soil fertilizer, has probably 

 contributed more than any other such to enrich our 

 larders with vegetable, and thereby animal, produce. 

 And, after undergoing the apothecary's fair imitation 

 of nature's disintegrating process, if it really possessed 

 any curative powers, there was little reason why it 

 should not have been as inoffensively serviceable as a 

 drug. Our forefathers evidently accredited it with a 

 profusion of medicinal qualities, and doing so, perhaps 

 were wise to pocket their squeamishness. 



Still, few patients nowadays, I imagine, would 

 choose to swallow the two to six ounces, four times a 

 day, prescribed of Bate's Aquaanimalis (p. 2), a cure 

 for "pleurisies, pains, rheumatisms," and other 

 disorders. Yet such was the allotted dose of that 

 compound of some herbal products, distilled treacle, 

 and horse-dung. Salmon did his best to perpetuate 

 the remedy, such as it was, by recommending it in 

 addition against stone, gravel, and urinary affections. 

 Of this kind too was Bate's Potio pleiiritica (p. 556), 

 which comprehended two ounces of "juice expressed 

 from horse-dung by mixing with it white wine," and 

 which was "to be taken three or four times a day 

 after blood-letting." But how anybody could stand 

 blood-letting three or four times a day, for any 

 number of days, I am happily not called upon to 

 explain. Concerning this potion Dr. Salmon advises 

 us : "There ought to be six ounces of the white wine, 

 for thereby the juice of the horse-dung will be the 

 better extracted. And it will serve instead of a 

 vehicle to take the medicine in." To an alternative 

 recipe he adds that it " ought also to be stone horse- 

 dung and newly made." This was an "approved" 

 remedy for pleurisy, stitch in the side, colic, gripes, 

 stone, and a variety of other bowel derangements. 



In the Testes equi prapai-ati, (Bate, p. 638), a 

 stallion was cut to provide the material which, " cut 

 in pieces and washed with white wine, speedily dryed 

 and reduced into powder," furnished a vaunted cure 

 for epilepsy, colic, and abdominal complaints. Salmon 



