

SECTION III. 

 WORMS. 



ANIMALS of the worm kind are placed, by scientific writers, as 

 the first in the class of Zoophytes ; but as, like serpents, they have 

 a creeping motion, so both, in general, go under the common ap- 

 pellation of reptiles. But though worms, as well as serpents, are 

 mostly without feet, and have been doomed to creep along the 

 earth on their bellies, yet their motions are very different. The 

 serpent having a back-bone, which it is incapable of contracting, 

 bends its body into the form of a bow, and then shoots forward 

 from the tail ; but the worm has a power of lengthening or con- 

 tracting itself at will. There is a spiral muscle, that runs round its 

 whole body, from the head to the tail, somewhat resembling a wire 

 wound round a walking-cane, which, when slipped off, and one 

 end extended and held fast, will bring the other nearer to it. In 

 this manner, the earth-worm, having shot out, or extended its body, 

 takes hold by the slime of its fore-part, and so contracts and brings 

 forward the hinder part, and in this manner moves onward. It 

 is from the manner of its motion, as here described^ that a worm is 

 called in Hebrew, the projector. 



There is no phenomenon in all natural history more astonishing 

 than what is sometimes seen in creatures of the worm kind. Some 

 of them will live without their limbs, and often are seen to repro- 

 duce them ; some continue to exist though cut in two, their nobler 

 parts preserving life, while the others perish that were cut away. 

 But the earth-worm, and all the Zoophyte tribe, continue to live in 

 separate parts ; and one animal, by means of cutting, is divided into 

 two distinct existences, sometimes into a thousand ! Spalanzani 

 tried several experiments upon the earth-worm, many of which 

 succeeded according to his expectation, although all did not retain 

 the vivacious principle with the same degree of obstinacy. Some, 

 when cut in two, were entirely destroyed ; others survived only in 

 the*nobler part ; and while the head was living, the tail entirely 

 perished, and a new one was seen to burgeon from the extremity. 

 But what was most surprising of all in some, both extremities sur- 

 vived the operation : the head produced a tail with the anus, the 

 intestines, the annular muscle, and the prickly beards ; the tail part, 

 on the other hand, was seen to shoot forth the nobler organs, and, 

 in less than the space of three months, a head, a heart, and all the 

 apparatus and instruments of generation. This part, as may easily 

 be supposed., was produced much more slowly than the former; a 



