492 THE BLOOD-CORPUSCLES OF THE ANNELIDES. 



similar habits, not to say structure, of which would have been 

 likely to suggest a comparison. 



One of the most surprising statements in Professor Lankester's 

 paper is to be found on the first page of it (p. 68), and it runs 

 thus : — 



' The fact, however, that abundant corpuscles are present in this same fluid [the 

 red vascular fluid of Chaetopodous worms] in the case of the earthworm (and, as 

 appears very probable, in all similar fluids) has hitherto escaped detection, owing to 

 the difficulties of observation which small corpuscles floating in a deeply-coloured 

 liquid present, and also to the fact that the method by which they may be rendered 

 apparent has not been applied to them by the various observers who have occupied 

 themselves with this matter.' 



It is difficult indeed to understand, and I shall not make any 

 suggestions as to* how Professor Lankester can have come to write 

 this. Professor Wharton Jones, whose writings and views as to 

 the morphology of blood-corpuscles are referred to in every text- 

 book, for example, in the latest edition of Quain and Sharpey and 

 Schafer, 1876 (p. 42), as 'supported by Busk, Huxley, and 

 Gulliver,' has devoted an entire page (p. 94) of the ' Philosophical 

 Transactions' for 1846, the volume containing the memoir thus 

 currently quoted, to the blood-corpuscles of the earthworm. 

 Amongst many other objects which Professor Wharton Jones re- 

 cords as having been procured by him from the blood of the 

 earthworm, he mentions { corpuscles altogether like the nucleus 

 and its surrounding granulous mass/ of certain nucleated cells ' both 

 in form and size/ This ' cellaeform nucleus is about -g-^ ^th of an 

 inch in diameter, with a finely granulous mass surrounding it.' 

 Professor Lankester describes the corpuscles of the earthworm as 

 follows : — 



' They are flattened fusiform bodies, usually somewhat broader at one end than the 

 other, sometimes nearly circular. They vary in size from the 5707th to the ^oVo** 1 °^ 

 an inch in long diameter, but by far the majority are of a uniform length of about 

 yJ^th of an inch, The corpuscles have a clean, sharp outline, but occasionally what 

 appears to be a small quantity of ragged protoplasm is seen beyond this sharp 

 contour.' 



Professor Lankester has not, in this paper, given us any figures 

 of the corpuscles thus clearly described. When his promised 

 figures do appear, it will be interesting to compare them with 

 the descriptions and figures given (1. c.) by Professor Wharton 

 Jones. 



Secondly, in the year 1852, Professor Ecker, in the third plate 



