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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vol. XXXVII. 



much of our knowledge of this interesting worm is due directly 

 to him and to the stimulus of his work. The first extended 

 account was written hv Collin' as an appendix to Kramer's 

 earlier work on Samoa. In this account Collin, with previous 



Lysidice viridis (Gray), a few detached heads of which had 

 from time to time been taken with the " Palolo " at the 'fishing' 

 season, and as no other annelid heads were taken with the 

 - Palolo" and all " Palolo" were headless, it was natural, for want 

 of better evidence, to ascribe the "Palolo" to the genus Lysi- 

 dice. The discov ery of the origin of the " Palolo " was made 

 independently by Kramer and Friedlaender, although the latter 

 was the first to publish an account of his investigations. 2 Fried- 

 laender succeeded in obtaining from the reef rock at Samatau 

 several specimens of "Palolo" together with the head ends of 

 an annelid of different appearance and much larger size belonging 

 to the genus Eunice. His material was afterwards studied by 

 Ehlers 3 who recognized an extreme case of sexual dimorphism 

 and showed the " Palolo" to be the epitokal posterior portion of 

 Eunice viridis (Gray). Ehlers says, " Ich erganze das im Voraus 



