Beet eelWorm. 57 



Oats as well as Conch-grass, and various other plants wild and 

 cultivated. 



The female is citron-shaped (see figures), and may vary from 0-8 

 to 1'3 millemetres, that is, may be slightly more than one-twenty-fifth 

 of an inch in length ; at one of the projecting, or somewhat pointed, 

 ends is the mouth-opening containing the "mouth-spear," near the 

 other is the reproductive opening, and after breaking out from beneath 

 the slight swelling of the bark where her larval life has been passed, 

 the female is to be found attached to the roots and rootlets. 



The colour varies with age from yellowish-white to a much deeper 

 tint ; the fully-developed specimens I have seen at the Hop-rootlets 

 were of a medium chestnut. The female contains up to as many as 

 350 eggs, about 0-08 mill, long by 0-04 mill, broad, and somewhat 

 bean- or kidney- shaped. These contain an eel- shaped embryo, and 

 most of them remain in the swelled body of the mother until the 

 wormlets have developed from them. The intestines meanwhile, and 

 other internal organs of the female, degenerate, she becomes a mere 

 husk and dies, and the larvfe, after quitting their eggs, leave the body 

 of the dead mother through the generative opening. 



The larva in this early stage is in eel-like form, and it moves 

 through the earth until it finds a root suitable for its attack. This 

 it pierces into with the help of its mouth-spear, and establishes itself, 

 and feeds within ; and as it has been observed that many of these 

 wormlets commonly attack the same root, they set on foot corre- 

 sponding amount of mischief. 



Here the larva goes through its changes : it sheds its old skin, 

 assumes a thicker form, ceases to move, and gradually from its presence 

 beneath the outer skin of the root causes this to bulge out like a small 

 swelling. The distinction between the sexes now soon makes its 

 appearance. 



A thick motionless larva destined to become a male temporarily 

 ceases to feed, shrinks within its old skin, develops a thin new one, 

 and becomes a long eel-like worm, which gradually grows into an adult 

 male. The figure (p. 5G) shows the male still cased in the thin skin 

 and as it lies under the outer coat of the root in the little swelling 

 above-mentioned (in the Beet-roots, or rootlets, from which the obser- 

 vations now quoted were taken). When developed, it bores its way 

 out of its old skin, and out through the coat of the root into the soil, 

 and finds and fertilizes the female. 



The development of the female is by gradually growing and 

 distending until she entirely loses all worm-like or eel-like shape, and 

 becomes successively flask-shaped, then of an elongated oval form, 

 then lemon- or citron-shaped without, — and within develops the female 

 organs, — and then rupturing the swelled root coat, remains, in regular 



