68 



LIFE, IN ITS LOWER FORMS. 



being a cylindrical column of flesh, with the free or upper 

 extremity truncate, and surrounded by one or more circular 

 series of tentacles. The interior is hollowed to form a 

 stomach, which is closed inferioriy, and opens superiorly 

 by a slit in the disk. This orifice is margined by two 

 muscular lips, excessively extensile, dilatable, and variable 

 in form. The space between the stomach and the outer 

 walls of the body is occupied by a number of perpendicu- 

 lar septa, or partitions of membrane, which are set in a 

 radiating manner, dividing the whole into chambers. In 

 these chambers are situated the ovaries, in the form of 

 frilled bands, much convoluted and covered with cilia, 

 the germs of which are developed in the interseptal cham- 

 bers, and find their way out through a duct which opens 

 at one of the angles of the mouth It is a pleasing sight, 

 and one by no means uncommon, to see five, ten, or 

 twenty young, of various sizes, but perfect in form, expelled 

 from the duct, and dispersed around, where they soon 

 attach themselves and constitute a colony around their 

 parent. 



While in the body of their mother, they occasionally 

 find their way into the tentacles, as these organs are 

 hollow, and communicate with the interseptal chambers. 

 Sir John Dalyell, who had paid great attention to these 

 animals, thought that this was their normal position. 

 "The embryos," he says, "appear first in the tentacula, 

 from whence they can be withdrawn and transmitted to 

 others by the parent, and are at last produced by the 

 mouth. In the course of six years a specimen preserved 

 by the author produced above two hundred and seventy- 

 Bix young ; some pale and like mere specks, with only 



