in stormy weather the worms sink more deeply, and are, 
of course, more difficult to obtain. 
Although lugworms have been so long used as bait, 
and fishermen have searched the same areas of sand day 
after day, there is usually no lack of them on most beaches. 
Professor M‘Intosh* suggests that they have “ resisted the 
attacks of man probably because a sufficient stock of ripe 
examples and the very young are covered at all times by 
the tide.” It is certain that plenty of old ones are covered 
by the tide, judging from the large specimens to be taken 
at low spring tides.t The habits of young ones are 
unknown, except those of the post-larval stages which are 
pelagic. 
Arenicola produces enormous numbers of eggs, as is 
seen from the condition of ripe females in the spring. 
In these the celomic fluid contains many thousands of 
full-sized ova.|| 
Unfortunately nothing is known about either the 
oviposition or the early stages of development of the 
common lugworm. We can only suggest, by inference 
from the known facts of development of other species of 
Arenicola, that the eggs are laid, probably entangled in 
mucus, on or in the sand in shallow water, and the early 
* Resources of the Sea, p. 14. 
+ Reckoning only the specimens which are exposed at an ordinary 
low tide their number is so great that the number removed at any one 
time for bait really makes no appreciable difference. Take, for 
example, the.area from which the Musselburgh fishermen dig their 
bait. For a distance of about a mile from Hast to West there is a zone 
from one to two hundred yards wide immediately above ordinary low- 
water mark in which the castings average twelve to fifteen per square 
yard. This area would, therefore, contain from three to four million 
worms, and the removal of a thousand per day would produce little 
effect upon the enormous number of worms accessible even at ordinary 
low tides. How far seawards the worms extend below ordinary low- 
water mark it is impossible to say, but no doubt there are here very 
substantial reserves. 
+ And also, in some localities, in late summer or autumn. 
There were about 80,000 ova (a rough estimate made by the 
dilution method) in the ccelomic fluid of one specimen examined. 
