THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 

 No. 78. JUNE 1874. 



LVII. — On a Land-Nemertean found in the Bermudas. By 

 R. V. WiLLEMOES-SuHM, Ph.D., Naturalist to the ' Chal- 

 lenger ' Expedition. 



[Plate XVII.] 



During our stay in the Bermudas I frequently visited the 

 mangrove-swamps in Hungry Bay, Bermuda Island, in order 

 to observe and collect the land-crabs. I then also turned over 

 the stones which are scattered on drier land, where the cedar 

 trees begin to dry, and looked out for worms. Lumhricus was 

 very common there ; but in the moist earth in which I found 

 them I soon also observed long slimy animals, which were 

 evidently not annelids : having brought them on board, I found 

 them to be Nemerteans. I then returned to the spot and col- 

 lected a good many more of them, which I kept in a bottle 

 with moist earth, and was then able to observe at leisure 

 during our cruise to the Azores. 



The largest of these worms have a length of 35 millims. by 

 2 millims. in width. They are of a milky white colour. Their 

 movements are slow, and sometimes caterpillar-like ; they 

 shoot out their long proboscis, fix it at some distant point, to 

 which it adheres by means of its papillie, and draw their body 

 after them. Their skin is filled with rod-like bodies, as de- 

 scribed by Max Schultze and others, and is covered on the 

 outside all over with cilia. In the front we find two pairs of 

 eyes, one of them near tlic entrance of the proboscis, the other 

 smaller one further out ; they consist of a fine granuhited 

 pigment imbedded in a colourless substance, which liolds these 



Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Scr. 4. Vol. x.m. 30 



# 



