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OTTO C. GLASER 
derived from their hydroid prey. According to Wright, the pos- 
sibility of this had occurred previously to Huxley and to Gosse, 
the latter of whom suggested methods of experimentation. 
Wright's evidence failed to convince Alder who considered the 
extraneous origin of the nettles improbable. Bergh, too, in a 
paper, abstracted in the Microscopical Journal ('62), described 
the nematocysts of several additional genera and species and 
interpreted them as secretions of the cnidophore. 
Bergh's failure to discuss Wright's work, led the latter to pub- 
lish in the next volume of the same journal an abstract of his 
former paper, together with additional evidence which seemed to 
confirm the original contention. Grosvenor says : ^ ' Owing either 
to the absence of figures or the aforementioned improbability 
of the conclusions it contained, this abstract seems to have been 
overlooked as completely as the original paper." All observers, 
from 1861 to 1903, failed to acquaint themselves with Wright's 
work, and assumed that the nematocysts were manufactured" 
by the eolids in which they are found. Bergh himself, however, 
seems afterward to have entertained suspicions. 
In the autumn of 1903 G. H. Grosvenor resurrected Wright's 
results, which, like all other writers, I too had overlooked, and on 
the basis of new experiments and histological observations gave 
an excellent account of the origin of the nematocysts. Recently 
Cuenot ('07), doubting both Grosvenor's statements and mine, 
re-investigated the subject, and now believes that the nettles are 
derived from ccelenterates. Cuenot's paper, however, contains 
fewer cytological details than the earlier one by Grosvenor. 
EVIDENCE BEARING ON THE ORIGIN OF THE NEMATOCYSTS 
One who maintains that the nematocysts of eolids are derived 
from their ccelenterate prey, must be prepared to answer certain 
questions : 
a. Do eolids feed on ccelenterates? 
h. Are the nematocysts of eolids identical with those of their 
prey? 
c. Are nematocysts indigestible? 
