314 ALFRED GIBBS BOURNE. 
are very long indeed. Their contents are finely granular, and 
do not stain with alum carmine. Connective tissue runs up 
between these cells, and tends to separate them into groups. 
Such cells appear to exist in the clitellum of all worms, and 
not elsewhere, so that they are probably the true clitellar 
glands, and secrete the egg-capsule. 
The epidermis in the neighbourhood of the genital apertures 
consists of columnar cells which are rather thinner and longer 
than those elsewhere, but none of them have become glandular 
(fig. 20). In the other non-clitellar portions of the clitellar 
region, the epidermis is similar to that found in the clitellum 
proper, except that the long club-shaped cells are entirely 
absent, and the short club-shaped cells are rather shorter. 
These cells, which are very clearly confined to the clitellar 
region of M. grandis, are found all over the body in many 
other worms, and it is difficult to assign a function to them. 
As our Moniligaster needs to have the surface of its body kept 
moist with mucus (it lives in what is often very dry earth), 
and the only glands present all over are the goblet-cells, we 
may assign to them a mucus-secreting function, a theory which 
is borne out by their appearance, and as the only glands which 
seem to be always confined to the clitellum are the long club- 
shaped glands, we may assign to these a capsule-secreting 
function—but what is the function of these coarsely granulated 
glands ? 
Capillary blood-vessels are remarkably abundant in all 
Moniligasters throughout the epidermis. 
The usual circular and longitudinal muscular layers of the 
body-wall are present. The circular muscles form, as Cerfon- 
taine has pointed out for Lumbricus, an almost continuous 
sheath, thickest towards the middle of a segment and thinnest 
in the region of the intersegmental grooves, and interrupted 
only for the passage of the sete, excretory ducts. of the 
nephridia and generative organs, and the muscles of the 
sete, &c. 
The muscle-fibres are unlike those of Lumbricus and 
most worms, They are like those of a leech, each cell having 
