1895.] Embryology. 1021 
In Bulletin 33 of the U.S. Division of Entomology, Mr. L. O. How- 
ard presents a valuable compilation concerning American Legislation 
Against Injurious Insects. 
EMBRYOLOGY." 
Conjugation of the Brandling.—Of the many kinds of earth- 
worms common in the Eastern United States one of the best known is 
the prettily colored but offensive-smelling species often called the 
striped worm from its conspicuous cross bands of red-brown and yellow, 
but known to the specialist at present as Allolobophora fetida. It 
` abounds in decaying vegetable matter especially in compost and man- 
ure heaps where it lies a few inches beneath the surface and may be 
readily captured though quick and active in its movements. In some 
regions it is regarded by the youthful angler as especially attractive 
bait for trout and as bait it has been used ever since the days of Isaac 
Walton who refers to it repeatedly in the Complete Angler by a name 
too characteristic to be lost from our vocabulary—the brandling. Thus 
in speaking of bait for the perch he says—“ and of worms the dunghill 
worm called the brandling I take to be the best, being well scoured in 
moss or fennel.” 
It is well known that earthworms, though they are hermaphrodites 
yet interchange sexual products in a remarkable process of conjuga- 
tion. Our knowledge of this process, is however, confined to the 
accounts of two naturalists who studied the large European earthworm 
Lumbricus terrestris. W. Hoffmeister, whose work on earthworms 
published in Brunswick in 1845 was the pioneer in a field that was 
later so diligently tilled by French and of late by English specialists, ob- 
served the worms as they came out on the surface of the ground in the 
night-time and obtained a pretty good idea of the main phenomena of 
conjugation. 
is account is in the main as follows: “ The old worms leave their 
holes first, the younger ones only when it is quite dark. They protrude 
their bodies with great caution and very slowly, after resting a while 
they feel about with the anterior end of the body till they reach a 
neighbors’s hole or come upon another worm. They now crawl along 
1 Edited by E. A. egin Baltimore, Md., to whom abstracts, reviews and 
preliminary notes may be se 
