VERMES. 67 



* 



scissors, leaving the section ragged or oblique. Here the wound being 

 clean it healed completely. In about seven weeks, this specimen extend- 

 ed about twelve inches, when it was delineated, fig. 7. The computed 

 dimensions of such animals, so variable, however, are somewhat arbitary. 

 In eighteen months from the time of this experiment, its length had 

 augmented to about eighteen inches, when it perished accidentally. 



Similar experiments have chiefly failed of success. The portion, de- 

 signed to be preserved, has gone to decay, though deprived of the in- 

 jured parts. I endeavoured thus to save two sections of a ruptured speci- 

 men, one being an inch and a half of the anterior extremity, the other 

 about three inches of the body below it. The wound of the former seem- 

 ed to heal in about a week, and both those of the latter appeared to be so 

 in three or four weeks. But although the thicker end was always in ad- 

 vance while crawling, it had not acquired that peculiar configuration 

 distinguishing the head of the genus during the course of seven months, 

 when both sections perished accidentally like the former. 



As light is commonly pernicious to the vermicular tribes, those por- 

 tions supplied with mud were kept chiefly in the dark. 



The intestinal tube is so tenacious of life, that it moves for several 

 days after separation from the body. When small, or seen in sections, 

 it much resembles a distinct animal, and hence have expert naturalists 

 been apparently deceived. Probably of two subjects, called Vilri niar/ni 

 by Delle Chiaje as other species, one represented, torn. iii. tab. xliii. fig. 1, 

 may be identified as a portion of fig. 1, Plate IX. of this volume. 



The intestinal canal has been of a vivid red in all my specimens ex- 

 cept one, wherein, what I considered the same organ, was white. 



It is said by Mr Davies, in the Transactions of the Linncean Society, 

 v. xi. p. 294, that he had a specimen of the Gordim maximus measuring 

 twenty-two feet long when dead. Having previously poured spirits on 

 it in a bottle, a proboscis, eight inches in length, was projected from the 

 emarginate part of the front. This, also, I conjecture, may have been a 

 portion of the intestinal tube, for I am not aware that the creature has a 

 proboscis. 



The dimensions and real aspect of such an animal are extremely de- 



