1892,] Bifurcated Annelids. 731 
The interpretation of one of the two parts as a lateral out- 
growth allies this process to that described by McIntosh (15) 
in the remarkable Syllis ramosa. This annelid lives inside of 
sponges and presents the anomaly that its buds, instead of 
` being confined to the direction of the main axis, may be also 
lateral, so that branches and sub-branches arise and produce a 
complex system with many ultimate tips that may become 
liberated as sexual animals. How far this lateral budding 
may be in each case brought about in connection with injuries 
is not known, but there seems to be an intimate connection 
between injury and budding, and McIntosh remarks, “ the 
body of the annelid appears to have a great tendency to bud- 
ding—laterally, terminally and wherever a broken surface 
occurs.” 
If, in this remarkable Syllis, budding has been acquired as. 
a result of power to regenerate lost parts, as has been urged 
by Lang and v. Kennel for other cases of budding among 
annelids, it is a recent and secondary process. Not so the 
regenerative power itself which is to be met with in a peculiar 
form in the double embryos of certain earthworms which arise, 
as claimed by Kleinberg and corroborated by Wilson, from a 
single egg. Still further back there seems to be in the ovum 
a double potentiality. Thus Hans Dreisch' claims to have 
produced complete larve from half eggs, that is that the egg, 
in the Echinus studied, might have formed two larve or two 
adults. 
Whether then in the reproduction of lost parts we have the 
formation at successive periods of duplications of the main 
axis to replace those lost, or in the cases of bifurcation (inter- 
preted as somewhat like lateral budding), we have the simul- 
taneous formation of duplications of the main axis, in either 
case the important fact is that the egg-individual may exhibit 
a power of reproducing its main axial parts without a sexual 
process. The bifurcated monstrosities thus exhibit what may 
be a universally present but latent ability of parts of a highly 
organized animal to form a complete individual like that to 
which they belong. 
Baltimore, Md., May 5, 1892. 
1See the AMERICAN NATURALIST, Feb., 1892, p. 178. 
