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XVII. — The Calciferous Glands of Earthworms. By J. Stephenson, D.Sc., M.B., 
Lieutenant-Colonel, Indian Medical Service ; Professor of Zoology, Govern- 
ment College^ Lahore; and Baini Prashad, D.Sc., Assistant Director of 
Fisheries, Bengal and Bihar and Orissa ; late Assistant Professor of Zoology, 
Government College, Lahore. (With One Plate and One Text-figure.) 
(MS. received September 17, 1918. Read December 2, 1918. Issued separately April 15, 1919.) 
CONT 
PAGE 
Introduction 455 
Material and Methods 457 
The Alimentary Blood Sinus .... 458 
On Rodlet Epithelium 459 
The (Esophagus in the Genus Pheretima . 469 
Other Simple Forms of Glands .... 462 
The Glands in the Genus Ocnerodrilus . . . 462 
The Glands in the Genus Odochsetus . . . 464 
The Glands in the Genus Eutyphceus . . . 465 
The glands as seen in dissection . . . 465 
Structure of the glands in sections . . 465 
Vascular supply of the glands . . . 466 
The epithelium of the glands .... 466 
ENTS. 
General Remarks on the foregoing Genera . . 468 
The Calciferous Glands in the Lumbricidse . . 468 
Historical 468 
General outline of the structure of the glands 
in Helodrilus 470 
The young Helodrilus caliginosus . .470 
The adult Helodrilus caliginosus . . . 473 
Helodrilus parvus . . : . . .474 
The glands in the genus Lumbricus . . 475 
Criticisms of Previous Work .... 477 
Summary and Conclusions 483 
References to Literature 484 
Explanation of Figures 485 
Introduction. 
The calciferous glands of earthworms are well-known structures, which occur 
under a variety of forms, and have been the subject of a considerable amount of 
research. They are appendages of the oesophagus which occur in different segments 
in different genera and species ; and the usual view of their morphological nature, 
put forward by Beddard (l) in 1895, and for long generally adopted, is that their 
epithelium is the oesophageal epithelium thrown into various degrees of folding. 
Beddard describes these different degrees in a number of different forms. 
Since the appearance of Beddard’s Monograph, the most noteworthy papers 
dealing with the morphology of the glands are those of Harrington (12) and 
Combault (6, 7, 8), to which may be added Ribaucourt (21) ; all these deal with 
the Lumbricidae only. The last-mentioned author considers the glands in the course 
of a general study of the Lumbricidse of Northern France.; Harrington and - 
Combault are both largely concerned with the physiology of the glands. But it 
is with the morphological views put forward by these latter authors that we have 
to do in the present communication. 
Briefly, Harrington, to use his own words, holds the secretory epithelium to 
be a greatly hypertrophied vascular wall, representing both the intima and the 
endothelium ; the glandular cells belong, in other words, to the vascular system. 
Combault says the same — the histology of the adult and of the embryo seems to 
TRANS. ROY. SOC. EDIN., VOL. LII, PART II (NO. 17). 70 
