MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 21 



out and above, the atrium of the adult. (Plate III. Fig. 25 ; Plate IV. 

 Fig. 32, atr.) Since the lophophore curves rapidly downward to the 

 anus and does not extend behind it, the act of cutting off the lower part 

 of the atrio-pharyngeal cavity from the upper (atrium proper) does not 

 continue behind the anus, which therefore opens directly into a part of 

 the atrium. This part has the form of a compressed funnel, and is 

 bounded behind and laterally by the kamptoderra, and orally by the 

 hinder ends of the lophophoric ridges, and also, since the latter do not 

 meet in the median plane, by the pharyngeal cavity. Thus it has come 

 about that the anus, which at first opened into the common atrio-pha- 

 ryngeal cavity of the bud, has now, in the separation of the two regions, 

 come to lie near their point of division posteriorly, but to open distinctly 

 into the atrial cavity. The more pronounced separation of the pai't of 

 the atrial cavity into which the anus directly opens from the remainder 

 of the atrium takes place much later, and will be described further on. 



In Figure 33, the ring canal (can. crc.) is seen to be already formed. At 

 this stage it is found on one side only, the left, if one looks at the poly- 

 pide from the tip of the branch. It occurs in only four sections (each 5 (i 

 thick), beiug found on the next section behind Figure 33, and on two sec- 

 tions nearer the oral end. At its oral extremity, it terminates blindly 

 as a thickening of the outer layer of the bud ; at its anal end, one sees 

 cells of the outer layer extending out partly over the canal, but failing 

 to enclose it ; in the next section the mesoderm is undisturbed. In sim- 

 ilar sections of an older polypide (corresponding in age approximately to 

 Plate IV. Fig. 35), the canal is found on both sides, and near to the oral 

 end, but at about the middle of the series (cf. Fig. 35) it is found to 

 open again into the body cavity. I therefore conclude that the ring 

 canal makes its first appearance at the base of the lophophore in a 

 region just oral of the middle of the polypide. Exactly how it arises, 

 whether by a growing together of the lips of a shallow furrow formed 

 from the mesodermal layer, or by the formation of a pocket, which, elon- 

 gating, penetrates between the inner and outer layers of the polypide at 

 the base of the nascent lophophore, I have not been able to determine. 

 Two facts induce me to believe that the later formation of the canal 

 oralwards results from the penetration of a sac-like mass of mesodermal 

 cells between the two layers of the polypide at the base of the nascent 

 lophophore. One usually finds, (1) as in Figure 33, can. crc, a double 

 mesodermal wall between the lumen of the canal and the coelom, and 

 one layer between the former and the inner layer of the bud ; and 

 (2) at the oral blind end of the ring canal a number of loose cells 



