122 Effects produced by Fresh Water 



violently lashing its anterior and posterior ends from side to 

 side : but this extreme agitation continued only a few seconds ; 

 when the animal subsided to the bottom, unable to exhibit 

 any farther signs of motion than some partial convulsive 

 twitches in different parts of its body, or a quivering here and 

 there in its segments or articulations. The skin of the body 

 was contracted in various places, so as to present a wrinkled 

 or withered appearance. In six minutes from the immersion 

 the animal seemed perfectly dead ; the wrinkled appearance of 

 the skin was gone, and not the slightest mark of irritability 

 appeared in any part. The other specimens, eight in all, ex- 

 hibited the same phenomena with little variance. None of 

 them showed any appearance of vitality after ten minutes' im- 

 mersion. Three of them protruded very slowly their remark- 

 able ventricose proboscis (if the latter term can be at all 

 appropriate) during their last expiring moments, and so it 

 remained after death. 



I allowed the above specimens to remain in water all night ; 

 and on the following morning, on going to put them in spirits 

 in order to preserve them, I was surprised to find them so 

 rotten, that they fell in pieces by their own weight, and were 

 quite useless as specimens. They had not, however, acquired 

 any offensive or putrid smell. 



Some days afterwards I obtained a fresh supply of living 

 specimens, some of which were entire ; but a number of them 

 were in fragments, having been cut through by the spade in 

 digging. The latter were quite alive, and seemed to have 

 suffered no more in point of vitality by having been cut, than 

 the common earthworm does under similar circumstances. I 

 had proof, too, that the being cut through does not prove fatal; 

 for, in one of the entire specimens, about 2 in. of the tail end 

 was a new production. The animal had, at some prior period 

 been severed by the bait-digger, and a new portion had been 

 restored. This portion, as is generally the case with repro- 

 ductions, was smaller in diameter than the rest of the animal. 

 It was also of a paler hue, and the line of demarcation be- 

 tween the old and the new parts was very distinctly marked. 



The separate pieces of the cut worms, even those which 

 wanted both head and tail, were affected by the fresh water in 

 the same way as the entire specimens : they were first thrown 

 into violent convulsions, then became affected with transient 

 spasms, and, in a few minutes, all appearance of vitality was 

 extinguished. 



The first idea that struck me, as to the possible cause of 

 these phenomena, was, that perhaps the water, from wanting the 

 density of sea water, was unfit for respiration, and that there- 



