252 VARIOUS FUNCTIONS OF ORGANS. 



object ; and the elaborate construction of their jointed 

 blades seems contrived for some use more delicate 

 than that of a shoving-pole. Perhaps my readers 

 may expect that I have some suggestion to make, but 

 I am sorry to say T have not. I have not been able 

 to discover any function that these elegant and ex- 

 quisite implements possess in addition to those just 

 mentioned, though I have little doubt that such func- 

 tion is to be discovered. It is a common phenomenon 

 for the same organ to have two or more distinct and 

 separate uses. The human tongue and palate play an 

 important part in tasting food and preparing it for 

 swallowing, and also in the utterance of speech ; and in 

 the worm before us, the beautifully-painted leaflets are 

 organs of respiration, the blood (or rather, according 

 to Dr. Williams, the peritoneal fluid) circulating 

 through them in spacious radiating canals, and re- 

 ceiving oxygen from the currents which the marginal 

 cilia perpetually impel across their surface ; but they 

 are also organs of locomotion ; waved through the 

 water, and half-turned when the stroke is made, — as 

 the waterman "feathers' his oar, — it is easy to see 

 that the animal is actually rowed along, like one of 

 the galleys of the ancients, with a bank of three 

 hundred oars. " Natare valet lamellis suis retrover- 

 sis, oblique sursutn erectis," — observes Fabricius of 

 these elegant animals. 



The following observations, whose beauty and truth 

 necessitate no apology for their quotation, are made by 

 one who is perhaps better qualified than any one else to 

 express a judgment on these creatures, from the care and 

 labour which he has bestowed on the study of them. 



