REPORT ON THE ANNELIDA. 
43 
portion (tliat wliicli surrounds the cavity, and is streaked by transmitted light) is tougher 
than the exterior glistening part, and is often torn out in the form of a long appendage 
to the tip. 
The scales amount to twenty pairs, and entirely cover the dorsum, the first and last 
being small. They are smooth, parchment-like, slightly iridescent organs, showing under 
a moderate power granular rows radiating from the attached portion. The segments to 
which they are fixed in an example having twenty pairs are : — -second foot, fourth, 
fifth, seventh, ninth, eleventh, thirteenth, fifteenth, seventeenth, nineteenth, twenty-first, 
twenty-third, twenty-fifth, twenty-eighth, thirty-first, thirty-fourth, thirty-seventh, 
fortieth, forty-third, and forty -fifth. They are symmetrically arranged, as usual, on both 
sides. No dorsal felt exists. 
The dorsal cirri are long smooth organs, tapering from base to tip, and each is 
furnished with the distal pear-shaped process. As usual they occur on the feet devoid 
of scales. The ventral cirrus is a short subulate process, with a basal division. The tip 
scarcely reaches the point of exit of the inferior bristles. 
The anus is dorsal and well-defined. The last pair of small scales arch over it 
superiorly. 
The ventral surface of the body has many brownish cuticular warts, which also cover 
the sides of the feet. Some of the younger specimens dredged off Christmas Harbour 
show a much more villous condition of the ventral surface, and the villi are pale. This 
papillose state is very conspicuous over the post- oral area. 
The play of colours even in the spirit-preparations is varied. The dorsum has a pale 
iridescent hue from the scales, upon which the lustrous dark golden inner dorsal bristles 
rest. These are flanked by the boldly developed long spines, which are deep brown, 
while the pale golden lateral tufts form a conspicuous fringe from head to tail along their 
outer border. Thus from the first the long spines form a median row flanked by two 
golden rows of varying shades. Lastly, the long lustrous ventral bristles constitute an 
interrupted series of palisades below. A large number of parasitic growths — sponges, 
Foraminifera, Diatoms, hydroid zoophytes, Polyzoa, Loxosomse, Ascidians, entangled 
worms, and others in tubes of sponge-spicules — occur amongst the bristles. 
One half of the alimentary system of the animal is formed by the powerful oesophageal 
apparatus or proboscis, the comparatively short intestinal canal succeeding the latter- 
having its surface augmented by lateral diverticula, which in these subserves the 
purpose of the spiral valve in higher forms. The intestine generally contains a cjuantity 
of greyish pulp, showing a vast number of sponge-spicula, 'fragments of Diatoms, bristles 
of Polynoidae and other Annelids, fragments of sessile-eyed Crustacea, ova, a few small 
Mollusca, and all the organic debris usually found in rich mud. The proboscis is much 
more flattened from side to side than in Aphrodita acideata, but it seems to be composed 
of the same densely arranged series of fibres. It differs in its relation to the alimentary 
