SCOLOPLOS ARMIGER. 515 



found in those from St. Andrews, Lochmaddy, the Channel Islands, and Shetland. These 

 minute differences, and especially those mentioned by De St. Joseph, indicate the slender 

 grounds on which specific distinctions may be founded. 



Reproduction. — Hornel (1891) on 2nd March procured, on a sandy beach at Egre- 

 mont, small gelatinous pear-shaped brownish egg-masses, the annelid being in close 

 proximity to them. The brownish cocoons are smaller than the green ones of Arenicola, 

 and are anchored amongst the bare ripple-furrows of the sand, the cylindrical stalk 

 descending two or three inches into the sand. He watched their development, and 

 corroborates Cunningham and Ramage, 1 who found the gelatinous transparent cocoons 

 with opaque white eggs and embryos in the estuary of the Forth at low water in 

 February. The larvae had three transverse bands of cilia, a well-developed prostomium 

 with two eyes, and by-and-by a pair of anal cirri as well as dorsal cirri appear. Similar 

 cocoons and eggs were found by Leschke 2 in Kiel Bay in May. Late larvae are found 

 from July to September at St. Andrews (1890). 8 



Garstang, 4 again, mentions February as the breeding season at Plymouth. 



The males are distinguished in January, when the body is distended with ripe sperms, 

 by the cream-coloured posterior region. 



In January the females are recognized by their buff-coloured bodies filled with 

 similarly tinted ova, which, though far advanced, vary considerably in size — probably 

 because they are in different stages. 



Habits. — When removed from their haunts in the sandy mud they push their finely 

 pointed snouts ceaselessly around it, and often coil their bodies into a spiral. If a little 

 sand is in the vessel it is soon transformed by the aid of the mucus into a central mass 

 permeated by the bodies of the examples, while the heads are pushed in various directions. 

 Their food seems to be the sandy mud in which they dwell. 



0. F. Midler gave the anterior region seventeen segments, and he found the species 

 in mud. To what group the Lumbricus squamatus 5 of Abildgaard belongs is doubtful. 

 It may be one of the Spionidae. 



Auclouin and Edwards 6 describe an Aricia sertulata which is probably synonymous 

 with 0. F. Midler's Lumbricus armiger. 



(Ersted 7 (1843) gives the anterior region fifteen segments with dark bristles. In 

 the succeeding segments the ventral pinna is bifid, the superior acuminate, and the 

 ligulate branchiae thrice as long, the ciliated margin regularly decreasing and finally 

 vanishing towards each end of the body. Subulate bristles in all the segments. Tail 

 truncate without cirri. In this description there is not much at variance with the 

 common British examples, for considerable variation occurs in the number of the anterior 



1 < Trans. E. Soc. Edin./ vol. xxxiii, p. 651, pi. xl, figs. 14a— 14f, 1888. 



2 ' Wiss. Meeresuiitersuch./ vii, p. 126, 1903. 



3 'Aim. Nat. Hist./ 6th ser., vol. vi. 



4 < Journ. M. B. A./ vol. iii, p. 225. 



5 ' Zool. Danica/ iv, p. 39, Tab. civ, figs. 1—4. 



G ' Aim. Sc. nat./ l e ser., t. xxix, p. 399. See also De Blainville, 'Diet. Sc. Nat./ xxxiv, p. 450, 

 and lvii, p. 483. 



7 < Annul. Dan. Consp./ p. 37, figs. 8, 106, 107, 109. 



