AND THE LOWER ANIMALS. 171 



penultimate rings of the parent's body. In the first 

 there may occasionally be seen as many as six indi- 

 viduals placed end to end, forming a sort of chaplet, 

 the string of which is represented by the intestinal 

 canal which travels from one to the other.* In Syllis, 

 I have never found more than one solitary individual ; 

 but to compensate for this, it has very important 

 functions to perform ; it alone is either male or female, 

 whilst the parent is simply a neuter. f 



Eeturning to the simile we have so often employed, 

 we should say here of the butterfly, that its egg pro- 

 duced a single caterpillar, which gave rise by spon- 

 taneous division to new individuals • but that these 

 were in some instances a series of caterpillars like the 

 first one, and of which a certain number sooner or 

 later became perfect insects, and in other cases were 

 fully-formed butterflies, that remained for some time 

 attached to the parent, and kept flapping their wings 

 in order to effect their escape, which they did sub- 

 sequently. 



In regard to the M.olluscan sub -kingdom, there is 

 little to be said. No true mollusk presents any of 

 the phenomena we are now considering. In Mollus- 

 coida, on the contrary, geneagenesis appears to be 

 the rule. As all these animals are more or less akin 

 to the Ascidiae and Salpge, we might expect that 

 their mode of reproduction would be analogous ; and 

 such a supposition is fully borne out by what is 

 known of their generative processes. 



'"* " Memoire sur l'Embryogenie cles Annelidcs," by M. Edwards, 

 in the " Annales des Sciences naturelles" for 1845. 



f " Memoire sur la Generation alternante chez les Syllis." — 

 Annales des Sciences naturelles, 1844 — " Rambles of a Naturalist." 



