Mode of Reprodncthnt of Geonemerte.^ australiensls. 120 



vivarium. Tlie parent animal survived, apparently in 

 perfect iiealtli and condition, until September lOtli, when I 

 killed and preserved it lor future reference. 



It will be obsei-ved that all these three lots of eggs (whifh 

 I shall describe presently) were laid by an animal in 

 ca|itivity, and if this wei'c all the evidence forthcoming some 

 critic might perhaps suggest that the laj'ing of the eggs was 

 due to the abnoi-mal conditions ot life, as has been suggested 

 in the case of Feripatus. Fortunately, howevei-, about the 

 same time two other observers, Mr. Hennel and Mr. Fiddian, 

 found similar masses of eggs in a state of nature, which they 

 kindly brought to me, and which subsequently proved to be 

 undoubtedly eggs of Geonemertes. Mr. Hennel obtained 

 his specimen on July 18th, in the damp bark of a gum tree 

 on the Dandenong Creek, and Mr. Fiddian's specimen was 

 found beneath a stone, at Creswick, at the end of July. 



The newly deposited eggs of Geoncnierfe.s austraUensls 

 are opaque spherical bodies about O'O mm. in diameter and 

 of a white or nearly white colour. Some thirty of these eggs 

 are enclosed together in a sausage-shaped mass of colourless 

 transparent jelly, about half an inch in length, the 

 individual eggs being scattered through the jelly. The 

 surface of the gelatinous matrix is smooth, and the jelly 

 appears to be common to all the eggs, instead of forming a 

 special envelope around each, as in the case of frog-S}uiwn. 

 One such mass of eggs is deposited at a time, and, as is 

 evident from the observations recorded above, at least three 

 can be deposited in succession by the same animal, at 

 intervals of several days, the animal itself remaining perfectly 

 uninjured. Hence it appears almost certain, although the 

 actual deposition of the eggs has not been (observed, that 

 they leave the body separately, each by the narrow duct 

 which leads from the sac or capsule containing it to tlie 

 exterior. This duct, then, appears to serve both for the 

 admission of the speraiatozoa and for the extrusion of the 

 fertilized eggs. The source (jf the gelatinous material in 

 which the eggs are deposited, and also the manner in which 

 the whole mass is moulded into shape, have yet to be 

 discovered. Probal^ly the animal discharges the eggs and 

 pours out the jelly as a secretion from the surface of the body 

 simultaneously. If this were done while the animal was 

 slowly crawling along the result would certainly be one of 

 the curious egg-masses described above. We may con) pare 

 this hypothotical process with the formation of the slimy 



K 



