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to find any trace of cell-divisions. I was eventually quite convinced 
that the cells were mixed in a confused mass with the contents of the 
tubes, to form what is practically nothing else than a living digesting 
fluid, by finding that most of the tubes were lined along their inner 
ventral sides by a thick layer of faecal “ crystals ” (fig. 6). The 
most likely explanation for this fact seems to be that the “ crystals ” 
are formed by the cells floating in this fluid, and then sink under the 
action of gravity. 
The epithelium lining the central canal had also completely dis- 
appeared into the mass of coagulum which distended it. In the 
diverticula the lumen is comparatively small, but in the central canal 
the lumen is in some parts large, and the epithelium, compared with 
the size of the lumen, very insignificant. The entire absence of the 
epithelium, in specimens otherwise not badly preserved, can only be 
accounted for by its complete disintegration, the cells wandering into 
the mass of food. 
Whether the cells thus mixed up like free amoebae in the coagulum 
in the gut find their way back again to the basement membrane to 
re-form the epithelium, I cannot say. It is unlikely that these living 
cells should be lost to the animal. Their nuclei may pass out through 
the walls of the stercoral pocket to function as blood-corpuscles, as 
I believe to take place in Scorpio. If so, the regeneration of the 
epithelium from the stripped basement membrane would form a most 
interesting object for research. 
On dissecting another specimen of Galeodes grsecus , I found many 
of the liver diverticula soft and blackish brown ; they would hardly 
stand the touch of the needle without breaking down into a brown 
powdery substance ; others, again, in the same animal were firm and 
white like the other healthy tissues of the body. This difference may 
perhaps he explained by assuming that in the latter cases the epithelia 
were in the normal condition, while in the former they were disin- 
tegrated. 
In the sections above described I found for the first time the 
assimilable products of the decomposition of the food-globules. It is 
seen as a highly refractive yellow coagulum within the tubules and 
in thick layers on their outer surfaces. In fig. 6 there is a mass 
of it within the tube immediately above the collection of faecal 
“ crystals,” and further, an accumulation of it outside the gut on its 
dorsal surface. 
As above-mentioned, the short hind-gut is enlarged into a great 
stercoral pocket. The area of the extremely thin wall of this recep- 
tacle for the faeces is further enlarged by being folded. Under a low 
power the wall looks thick, which appearance is due to a close pleating 
of the membrane. Between the pleats on the inner side of the 
membrane, are found strands of faecal matter, out of which the still 
serviceable fluids are being extracted. Between the same pleats, but 
on the outside, are strands of the same yellow substance which has 
