584 W. BLAXLAND BRNHAM. 



I have referred to the amoebocytes above. The eleocytes 

 of Octoch fetus differ but slig'htly from those described by 

 Rosa; and, indeed, different species of Allolobophora 

 contain eleocytes that differ slightly amongst themselves. 

 Thus in some cases (e.g. A. foetid a) the oily globules fuse 

 with one another when the cell is exposed to the aii", giving 

 rise to a peripheral halo of oil round a central nucleus ; 

 whereas in A. putris this fusion does not occur. I have not 

 been able to detect the ^' centrospheres" which, though 

 absent in some species, seems to be a very conspicuous fea- 

 ture in other eleocytes. 



The " vacuolated lymphocytes," which exist in those species 

 in which eleocytes ai'e less abundant — as in A. caliginera, 

 Lumbricus and sp. — differ chiefly from the "lamprocytes" 

 in the absence of the refriugent granules. Rosa notes also 

 their slow coloration with gentian violet. 



It may be mentioned here tliat Rosa has shown that these 

 refringent globules in eleocj'tes — which are yellow in some 

 species — are easily distinguished from chloragogen globules 

 by various reactions; and he shows the error of the idea — due 

 originally, I believe, to Prof. Ray Lankester,^ and later on to 

 Kiikenthal's work — that these spherical cells are simply 

 amoebocytes gorged with chloragogen granules ; a view that 

 has crept into a number of text-books, from its plausibility 

 and from the ready way in which the function of the cells 

 was thereby explained. 



Cuenot, too, confused the eleocytes with chloi-agogen 

 cells, but explained their history rather differently. 



There seems, according to Rosa, to be no doubt as to the 

 distinction between the oily globules and the chloragogen. 

 But in the " granules " of the laniprocytes occurring in 

 Octocheetus we have quite a different substance, resembling 

 some form of chloragogen in its insolubility in absolute 



' The view lliat tlie chloragori^en cells are metanioipliosed into free cells of 

 the coaloniic fluid is due to d'Odekem, wlio in his monograph on " Tubifex 

 livulorum " ('Mem. Couron. Acad. Belg.') develops this view and gives 

 figures ill su|ipoit of it. — E. R, L, 



