136 Tue Ottawa NarTuratist. [ October 
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the sex. Both these tubes end in a spacious atrium in the centre 
of the body. The digestive canal posteriorly is so pressed upon by 
these large viscera that it becomes reduced to a mere slit in the 
walls of the atrium. Villot states that the atrium or cloaca is 
capable of protrusion externally, and Grenacher found also, in 
Gordius ornatus a well-defined cloacal aperture, but Vejdovsky 
failed to discover it, or to make out the testes and vasa deferentia. 
No doubt the main function of the adult Gordius is the pro- 
duction of eggs, and the perpetuation of the species, as the diges- 
tive organs are of limited capacity and appear to end blindly in 
the wall of the atrium. The modes adopted for dispersal are most 
remarkable. Adult Hair-eels have been taken from the bodies of 
water-beetles when flying from one pond to another by night, the 
serpentine creature being, it is stated, coiled around the abdomen 
under the wings and elytra, though Packard states that it actually 
penetrates into the body of beetles and locusts, twining round the 
intestines of its host, and finally emerging into free life, when the 
water is at last gained. It is difficult to understand how the 
adult Gordiws can do this, and become for the time an entopara- 
site. The female, on reaching the water, deposits minute whit- 
ish pear-shaped eggs, attached in strings by a cement secreted in 
the atrium. A thick capsule and two or three thin internal layers | 
protect the egg, which soon divides up into a group of rounded 
cells, like a thimble-berry ; for one end becomes pushed in, con- 
verting the germ into a cup-shaped gastrula. Later the embryo 
elongates, becoming pyriform, and developing three rows of hooks 
in the gullet, and three sharp stylets at the apex of the body. 
With the last-named instruments it pierces the shell, and escapes 
into the water. The head is everted or can be drawn in like the 
finger of a glove. Villot describes a strong muscular band around 
the anterior half of the embryo, a protrusible proboscis, a gullet 
or throat-tube and a capacious intestine with a ventral pore a short 
distance in front of the acuminate posterior end of the body. As 
Packard points out, the larva is wholly unlike the adult, having 
‘“some resemblance to Acanthocephalus by its cephalic armature, 
