THE PEOBOSCIS. 243 



stomach, throat, or proboscis, is furnished with a 

 formidable apparatus of horny grasping jaws, variously 

 modified into teeth, hooks and knife-blades, for seiz- 

 ing, tearing^ and cutting prey ; but in Phyllodoce, 

 there are none of these, the elegant animals feeding 

 probably on the fluid juices of dead animals, or on 

 their soft parts, wdiich need no violence. The very 

 tip, however, which of course is perforated, is sur- 

 rounded by a muscle, by means of which it contracts 

 forcibly on whatever it is applied to, and thus holds 

 it firmly while the inversion of the sac drags it into 

 the body to be digested. The disappearance of the 

 organ is as astonishing as its extrusion ; beginning at 

 the tip, which is quickly turned in, the whole rapidly 

 returns to its cavity in the same order as it came out, 

 and then we wonder how so enormous a proboscis can 

 be enclosed in so slender a body. 



There is a species of this genus, very common in 

 the situations I have mentioned, named Ph. lamel- 

 ligera ; which is of a yellowish-green, sometimes 

 verging to an olive hue. But a much more beautiful 

 kind has been sent me alive from Torquay, by the 

 courtesy of Mr. Kingsley, who found it beneath a 

 stone, at the edge of the laminarian level. I can 

 find nothing corresponding to it either in Audouin 

 and M. -Edwards, or in Dr. Johnston's papers on the 

 British Annelida, and shall therefore describe it under 

 the appellation of P. marginata. 



Its length varies from five to three inches, according 

 as it is elongated or contracted ; the body is composed 

 of about 170 segments, nearly of equal diameter 

 throughout, and abruptly rounded at both extremities. 



E 2 



