126 FIELD AND FOREST. 



the anatomy of this despised inhabitant of the ground. The Interesting 

 and the Beautiful in an angle-worm ! Isn't it laughable? 



Everyone is familiar with the external appearance of the earth-worm. 

 It is so common an object that no one needs to be reminded of its 

 pale blue, or sometimes reddish, color, of its annular segments, and 

 the pointed head it is able to project and retract, with which it forces 

 aside the particles of earth as it makes its way through the soil. But 

 its internal appearance may not be so well known, except to those stu- 

 dents of the great things in the little, who without presuming to even 

 try to enter the charmed circles where the Naturalists are, love God's 

 living world, and believe with Robert Browning, that "God must be 

 pleased one loves His world so much." 



The muscular layers, projecting inwards at the apparent rings be- 

 tween the segments, form circular partitions which divide the whole 

 internal cavity into as many chambers as there are segments in the 

 worm's body. By these septa the internal organs are suspended and 

 held in place. The alimentary canal is straight, with a short and 

 narrow pharynx and oesophagus — it is hardly possible to say where one 

 ends and the other begins — a very muscular stomach, and an enlarged 

 intestine opening at the extremity of the body. The hepatic tissue, 

 brownish yellow in color, and well devoloped, extends, frequently if 

 not always, from a point in front of the stomach to the termination of 

 the intestine, completely surrounding that canal, and carrying the dorsal 

 blood vessel embedded in its substance. The circulation is complete 

 and closed. The whole system is abundantly supplied with blood 

 vessels conducting a red fluid uncoagulable and charged with numerous 

 colorless, highly refracting globules. In several chambers, above and 

 in front of the stomach, the transverse canals, which in every segment 

 pass off from each side of the dorsal, to join the abdominal vessel be- 

 neath the alimentary canal, bear varicose enlargements which pulsate. 

 These heart-like dilatations keep the blood in motion, but whether the 

 current is always in the same direction, whether the same set of vessels 

 are invariably arteries and invariably veins, is not known. 



The two sexes are included in one individual. The brain, close to 

 the anterior end, beneath the first or second segment, and above the 

 oesophagus, is formed »by the union of two small, pyriform masses of 

 nerve substance, adherent by their bases. The ganglion gradually 

 tapers to two nerves, one on each side, which pass around the cesopha- 



