ANABIOSIS OF THE EARTHWORM 



61 



worm and placed it directly on moistened filter-paper for the 

 revivification or preserved it temporarily in a corked test-tube. 



Before proceeding to the experiments on exsiccation I made a 

 series of weighings in order to determine the percentage of water 

 in the earthworms. The glass tubes with the worms were 

 weighed and placed in a steam-bath where they were dried at 

 100°C. until the weight became constant. Then the worms 

 were dried during a certain time in the desiccator over calcium 

 chloride and weighed once more. 



The results of thirteen determinations is given in table 2. 



TABLE 2 



The results of these weighings are very near to those of similar 

 weighings undertaken by Miss Stchepkina and myself in 1916, 

 when we found the earthworms to contain on the average 82.7 

 per cent of water. 



EXPERIMENTS, SERIES I 



The first series of my experiments consisted in the exsiccation 

 of earthworms and their immediate revivification. 



The results of the exsiccation are given in the following table 3. 



