294 APPENDIX. 



motionless, a mere velvet string across the hand. Ask the neigh- 

 bouring Annelids and the fry of the rock fishes, or put it into a vase 

 at home, and see. It lies motionless, trailing itself among the gravel ; 

 you cannot tell where it begins or ends ; it may be a dead strip of 

 seaweed, * Himanthalia lorea * perhaps, or * Chorda filum ; ' or even 

 a tarred string. So thinks the little fish who plays over and over it, 

 till it touches at last what is too surely a head. In an instant a bell- 

 shaped sucker mouth has fastened to his side. In another instant, 

 from one lip, a concave double proboscis, just like a tapir's (another 

 instance of the repetition of forms), has clasped him like a finger ; 

 and now begins the struggle : but in vain. He is being ' played ' 

 with such a fishing-line as the skill of a Wilson or a Stoddart never 

 could invent ; a living line, with elasticity beyond that of the most 

 delicate fly rod, which follows every lunge, shortening and lengthen- 

 ing, slipping and twining round every piece of gravel and stem of 

 sea-weed, with a tiring drag, such as no Highland wrist of step could 

 ever bring to bear on salmon or on trout. The victim is tired now ; 

 and slowly, and yet dextrously, his blind assailant is feeling and 

 shifting along his side, till he reaches one end of him ; and then the 

 black lips expand, and slowly and surely the curved finger begins 

 packing him end-foremost down into the gullet, where he sinks, inch 

 by inch, till the swelling which marks his place is lost among the 

 coils, and he is probably macerated to a pulp long before he has 

 reached the opposite extremity of his cave of doom. 



" Once safe down, the black murderer slowly contracts again into a 

 knotted heap, and lies, like a boa with a stag inside him, motionless 

 and blest." — North British Review, no. xliii. p. 38. 



Specimen 14 feet in length, from 2 to 4 lines in breadth, linear- 

 elongate, exannulate, flattened, very smooth, soft and slimy, of a 

 uniform reddish-black colour. Head distinct, about \ of an inch 

 long, like that of a serpent, white on the front margin, and marked 

 with three whitish lines down the vertex, slit on each side so as to 

 form a furrow there more or less distinctly defined, according to the 

 contractions of the worm. Mouth large, inferior, in the body 

 behind the head, forming a longitudinal slit when closed, but when 

 open a wide roundish aperture, with a fleshy pink folded lip inter- 

 rupted anteriorly. Body immaculate, variously entwined and twisted, 

 with a faint whitish line running from the hinder angle of the cephalic 

 groove along each side to an uncertain length, and soon disappear- 

 ing ; ventral surface a shade lighter than the back ; posterior extre- 

 mity somewhat rounded and attenuated. There seems to be an 

 aperture in the posterior angle of each cephalic groove. 



When left to die in sea-water, the body ruptures in a few, and 

 then in many places, exposing the white or pink interranea ; and 

 often a portion of the intestine of several inches length is extruded, 

 looking like another worm among the folds. This intestine is as 

 thick as ordinary twine, cylindrical, and of a pink colour. At the 

 broken place the body soon separates into pieces and rapidly dis- 

 solves. In ordinary circumstances the worm is not brittle. 



"It is especially during night that the Sea long worm unfolds 



