EEPOKT ON THE ANNELIDA. 
203 
but it appears to conform to the ordinary type, though the longitudinal muscular 
layer is comparatively thin. The softening of the nerve-cords seems to have rendered 
their area diffuse. 
SylUs ramosa agrees with Grube’s “ stolones ” ^ in having no proper pharynx and 
proventriculus. The entire animal and its branches seem to be devoid of such, and yet 
the structure of the greater part of it is more in keeping with the ordinary type seen in 
Syllis. The large eyes of the female buds correspond with those in the “ stolones.” 
Several species from the Philippines are described by Grube, in which an alternation 
of long and short dorsal cirri occur. Thus, for example, Syllis lycoclmtusf from 
Samboangan, has long cirri of forty or fifty segments, and shorter with about half 
the number; while Syllis Jlaccida^ has from twenty-five to thirty joints in the 
shorter cirri, and from forty to fifty -five in the longer. 
The only known marine forms in which gemmation occurred were those in which the 
posterior segments of certain forms gave off buds in linear series. Thus amongst the 
Derostome Ehabdocoela Duges found in southern France a form which he termed 
Catenula, characterised by its linear budding. Two marine examples of the same genus 
were procured by Schmarda, one from South Africa and the other from New South Wales. 
The species from the Cape forms a chain of several individuals. Oscar Schmidt,^ again, in 
the same group has described the linear division of a Microstomum, and similar gemmation 
also occurs in Stenostomum. Amongst the Annelids it is more than a century since 
0. F. Muller observed the budding of Nais prohoscidea. He mentions two varieties of 
this fission, viz., first, in which the last segment sprouts forth into a number of body-rings, 
the posterior being the oldest, and the anterior the youngest as well as the smallest. 
The second kind occurs when the body has attained forty segments, for then a division 
begins in the middle, two bodies of twenty segments each being formed ; and Max 
Schultze® and others have subsequently extended our information on this subject. The 
former maintained that the separation took place, not between two rings as 0. F. Muller 
stated, but in the middle of a segment. He also found that when the parent-stock had 
been reduced to twelve or fourteen segments the budding process ceased. The former 
author also mentioned the division of ChcBtogaster vermicularis ; and this habit in the same 
genus has further been elucidated by Gruithuisen, von Baer, Ehrenberg, D’Udekem, 
0. Schmidt, and Eay Lankester. 0. F. Muller also pointed out the fissiparous condition 
in Syllis prolifera, in which a similar new body was attached to the old, apparently in 
the form of a tail. He Quatrefages ® met with a similar species on the coast of Brittany, 
and, like Muller, he found that the buds alone showed the sexual elements. Milne- 
Edwards'^ described the same features in Myrianida, from Sicily, in which a new 
1 Annelidenfauna d. Philippinen, p. 110. ^ Ihid., p. 117. ^ Ihid., p. 118. 
^ Neue Beitrage zur Naturgesch., &c., Bhabdocoelen Strudelwiirmer, 1848, p. 57. 
^ Archivf. Naturgesch., 1849, pp. 293-304. ® Ann. d. Sci. Nat, ser. 3, t. i. p. 22, 1844. 
^ Ihid., t. iii. p. 17, 1845. 
