16 ART. 5. — N. YATSU : 



bodies the following seems to me the most probable. As the 

 cœlomic epithelium of other animals often perform the excretory 

 function, so the cells forming the dendritic organs and the 

 epithelial ridges accumulate waste products found dissolved in the 

 cœlomic fluid. The blood corpuscles now force their way into 

 these regions in order to take up the waste substance accumulated 

 there. At the same time they are turned into the spindle bodies 

 and set free into the body cavity again, being in the end collected 

 in the peduncular cavity ; in short, the spindle bodies function 

 only at their formation as the eliminators of waste products. 



III. OTOCYSTS. 



Morse ('78) is the only investigator who describes the 

 occurrence of the otocysts in the adult Lingula. Unfortunately 

 his paper has not been published in full, so that no details are 

 forth-coming. The only thing I can learn is that " their [oto- 

 cysts'] position and general appearance recall the auditory capsule 

 figured by Claparède in certain tuticolous Annelids " (p. 157). 



On the other hand, in his recent work Blochmann ('00) 

 pronounced thus positively upon the absence of the otocysts : 

 " Nun kann ich zunächst mit voller Sicherheit behaupten, dass 

 bei erwachsenen Lingula Otocysten nicht vorhanden sind " (p. 

 124). He ('98) regarded the vesicles found in the larva? of 

 Discinisca and referred to as the otocysts by Fritz Müller 

 ('60, '61) as the funnels of the nephridium. Moreover he claimed 

 to have found a duct leading from this organ to the exterior. 



In the free-swimming larvse of Lingula Brooks ('78) rightly 

 observed the otocysts, but he was not able to study the young 

 Lingula, and was very cautious in his statements about the fate 

 of these vesicles. 



