ANATOMY OF NEREIS VIRENS. 169 
lands, bringing the subsoil to the surface and allowing the 
air to get to the roots of plants, they occasionally injure 
young seedling cabbage, lettuce, beets, etc., drawing them 
during the night into their holes, or uprooting them. 
~The next and highest type of Annuiata is the common 
sea-worm of our coast, Nereis virens Sars. It lives between 
tide-marks in holes in the mud, and can be readily obtained. 
The body, after the head, eyes, tentacles and bristle-bearing 
feet have been carefully studied, can be opened along the 
back by a pair of fine scissors and the dorsal and ventral red 
blood-vessels with their connecting branches observed, as 
well as the alimentary canal and the nervous system. 
The anatomy of this worm has been described by Mr. F. 
M. Turnbull. It is very voracious, thrusting out its pharynx 
and seizing its prey with its two large pharyngeal teeth. It 
secretes a viscid fluid lining its hole, up which it moves, 
pushing itself along 
by its bristles and 
ligule. At night, 
probably during the 
breeding season, 
they leave their 
holes, swimming on 
the surface of the 
water. 
-The body consists 
of from one hundred 
to two hundred seg- 
ments. The head 
consists of two seg- 
ments, the anterior 
and buccal, the for- _ ‘ : 
mer with four eyes of tk Amoehd (Spharodorum). “thick cuticular 
layer with the pore-canals ; m, muscular layer; m’, 
and two pairs of muscles of the bristles, s, which retract the central 
antenne. The sec- foot-lobe, while others pass to its dorsal glandular 
projection, d.—After Gegenbaur. 
ond segment bears 
four antenne (tentacular cirri). Each of the other segments 
bears a pair of paddle-like appendages (rami), which may be 
best studied by examining one of the middle segments which 
