SEA-WORMS* 1^7 



difficulties in a way you can scarcely understand, though you 

 see the whole performance. He simply unravels himself; 

 taking the right end of him, and applying a little pressure, he 

 glides off without any fuss, and you see that there is a flowing 

 motion of the black string ; no untying, no contortions. He 

 has uncoiled about a foot of himself and laid hold of a stone, 

 a shell, or a weed that distance away, and to the horror of 

 yourself, who hoped now to be able to measure this animated 

 bootlace, he has commenced twisting himself into an equally 

 hopeless tangle at -the other end. 



He is so remarkably elastic too ! You may look at this 

 living Gordian knot and see about a quarter of an inch of the 

 head end protruding from a tight kink ; you may watch the 

 kink and certify that no movement takes place in it ; yet the 

 head moves away to a distance of five or six inches, simply by 

 the stretching and consequent attenuation of that free quarter 

 of an inch. 



The Rev. Hugh Davis many years ago contributed to the 

 Transactions of the Linnean Society an account of his dealings 

 with this Planarian, and as does not often happen to contri- 

 butions to that useful but technical work, it became much 

 quoted. It was all sober fact, as became the calling of the 

 author and the character of the eminent society to which he 

 communicated the story; but we were greatly amused not 

 many years ago seeing Davis' account of its length, etc., put 

 forward as a specimen of a "traveller's tale," drawn chiefly 

 from the imagination. 



Later, but practially identical accounts have been published 

 by Gosse, Charles Kingsley, and others. Kingsley, if we 

 remember rightly, had to defend himself from the charge of 

 shooting with the long-bow, or "slinging the hatchet," and in 

 doing so he said there was so much that was truly marvel- 

 lous in Nature that it was unnecessary for an author to invent 

 lies wherewith to startle his readers. Yet the story was too 

 much for a well-known and generally well-informed science 



i 



