Miss S. G. Foulke on Trachelius ovum. 477 



Maxwelltown, Dumfries, on account of "its bifurcated tailj" 

 this specimen was dead, and was unfortunately sent dry. 



The only specimen known to me which presents a similar 

 arrangement of the hinder end of the body is in the Anato- 

 mical Department of the University Museum at Oxford, a 

 short notice of which was published by Mr. Charles Robert- 

 son in 1867*. 



The specimen having died after losing its " tails," and the 

 portions having been lost during my absence from London, 

 there has been no opportunity of making an anatomical inves- 

 tigation ; had I done so I should, I am sure, have found the 

 dorsal blood-vessel dividing into equal branches at the point 

 of bifurcation, and I should, I think, have found the enteric 

 tract in the right half a little larger than that in the left. 



My primary object in this notice is to put on record an 

 occurrence which, it is possible, is not very rare, but which 

 has, at least, escaped general observation. It can be but 

 matter of guesswork what was the nature of the accident 

 that preceded the appearance of the bifurcated end ; it is 

 almost as hard to see exactly what the phenomenon does 

 teach us : — 



1. It makes it quite certain that, like lizards with their 

 tails, earthworms may reproduce bilaterally what is ordinarily 

 only produced terminally. But this is only another way of 

 saying that earthworms are subject to a well-known and 

 widely diffused " law," 



2. The fact that the clitellum only became apparent a few 

 days before the loss of the hinder end is positive ; but the 

 events may or may not have any relation to one another. If 

 they have, they only show that when the earthworm is repro- 

 ducing parts of its body it is,^ro tajito, comparable to a form 

 reproducing itself asexually, a phenomenon which, so high 

 in the scale of organization, is, we know, not compatible or 

 contemporaneous with sexual reproduction. 



XLV. — Trachelius ovum. By Sara GWENDOLEN FoULKEf. 



In first describing this Infusorian, Ehrenberg attributed to it 

 the possession of a much ramified oesophageal canal ; but his 

 view^, subsequently upheld by Clapai^de and Lachmann, has 

 been strongly opposed by W, Saville Kent, who claims that the 

 so-called alimentary canal is merely the granular protoplasm. 



* Quarterly Journal Microsc. Sci. vii. (1867), p. 157. I am indebted 

 to Mr. Hobertson for this reference. 



t From the ' Journal of the New York Microscopical Society.' 



