48 PLANARIA FELINA. 



in conformity with others, it refuses food 

 for weeks, and then receives it with avidity. 

 However, its usual readiness to feed, ren- 

 ders it the most favourable subject of all 

 for experiment and observation. 



These circumstances, which are a suffi- 

 cient guide to recognition of the animal, 

 being premised, we have next to consider 

 certain admirable phenomena by which it is 

 more eminently distinguished. 



Though I have possessed hundreds of the 

 planaria felina at every season of the year, 

 I am ignorant whether its propagation re- 

 sults from the sexual union, and whether it 

 multiplies by eggs or living foetuses. I 

 have anxiously investigated the point ; but 

 no experiments have had a satisfactory is- 

 sue, nor has any circumstance whatever, 

 either immediate or remote, tended to the 

 most distant elucidation of it. Once, in- 

 deed, I thought that some minute, whitish, 

 elliptical bodies, which afterwards disap- 

 peared, were discernible at the bottom of a 

 vessel in October 1811. Nothing followed, 



