300 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



worms with which they come into contact, so that in a 

 few hours, especially on a hot day, the whole of the worms 

 become soft and flabby, and soon die. 



JNo attempts have been made, so far as the writer is 

 aware, to preserve lugworms for subsequent use as bait. 

 It seems doubtful, judging from the experiments which 

 have been made on the preservation, bj means of chemical 

 substances such as boracic acid, of more hardy animals for 

 use as bait, whether such experiments on Arenicola would 

 be attended with any great success. Cold storage would 

 probably be more successful than chemical means of pre- 

 servation in the case of Arenicola. Undoubtedly the best 

 plan is to use the worms as soon as possible after they are 

 dug, but during the brief interval between digging and 

 using them they should be placed in a moderate amount 

 of sand containing just enough moisture to make it 

 coherent, and kept cool. 



Lugworms are abundant on most of our sandy 

 beaches. In some places, however, e.g., near Aberdeen, 

 the force of the sea is so great that the worms cannot live 

 in the constantly shifting sands. In other places, 

 especially where organic matter is plentiful, e.g., near 

 some sewage outfalls, they may be found in large numbers 

 and of good size. The organic matter may be almost 

 entirely absent from the surface layer of sand, so that the 

 beach may have the usual yellow colour, but it may be 

 present in such quantities in the subjacent layer as to 

 produce in the latter a dark-grey or even almost black 

 colour. In this case the castings brought to the surface 

 by the worms are usually of the same dark colour, and are 

 conspicuous on the yellow beach. In thus passing through 

 their bodies the sand laden with organic matter, in 

 removing part of this during digestion and in discharging 

 the partially cleansed sand od the surface of the beach, 



