ON ANNELIDA. 39 



tortoises from their shell with a mattock, in the same mamier 

 as they remove the worms from plants which are infested by 

 them. 



Finally, the word Elmins, which is frequently employed by 

 Hippocrates in many of his works, and among others, in his 

 General Treatise on Diseases, was applied by him to those 

 animals which are at present known under the denomination 

 of intestinal worms, of which he was acquainted with but a 

 small number of species. Aristotle has employed it in the 

 same manner, as well as JElian, every time that he speaks of 

 the substances which are used to rid dogs of the worms, to 

 which they are subject. 



The Latin authors, and Pliny among the rest, appear to 

 have restricted the word lumbricus to the intestinal worms, 

 and to have rendered the three Greek denominations by a 

 single one, that of vermes, from which it has happened that 

 the modems have been led to the same confusion, by the 

 w^ord worms, which, as well as the French word vers, is evi- 

 dently derived from the Latin. All the other animals, which 

 they comprehended under the name of exsanguia, meaning by 

 that term that they had not red blood, were divided under the 

 three titles of insecta, mollusca, and zoophyta. The term 

 vermes did not then possess that undue extension which it 

 obtained among the naturalists of the last century, with wdiom 

 it at last comprehended all animals, with the exception of the 

 vertebrata, the insects and the Crustacea. This extension was 

 probably owing to the having united in the definition of the 

 word the consideration of the softness of the body to that of 

 its elongated form. To Linnaeus unquestionably is attribut- 

 able this unlucky innovation ; for, previously to his time, we 

 find that Isidore, of Seville, though he has employed the name 

 of vermes for a sort of class, has only included under it such 

 animals as might with some propriety be so called : in fact 



