A naturalist's rambles on the Devonshire coast (Page 255) (5980717721)

ITS STRUCTURE. 255

various directions. I could not detect the least trace

of ciliary action on it, or indeed on any part of the

surface.

Within the sac, which appears to have thin walls,

there is a mass of viscera suspended from the bottom

of the furrow, and hanging down in a gradually taper-

ing cone nearly to the bottom of the interior, to which

in some specimens (not in all), the mass was tied by

a slender thread or ligament. Among the viscera

were two or three globular organs, one of which was

yellow, and appeared larger and more filled with food,

or less and more empty, in different degrees, in dif-

ferent individuals. I should have little hesitation in

pronouncing this, from its resemblance to a similar

viscus in the Polyzoa and Kotifera, to be the stomach.

The other globose viscera were colourless, but had a

turbid nucleus.

The arrangement and bulk of this mass of viscera

vary much in individuals, and in some the Avhole is

almost obsolete. In one or two there was an isolated

globose viscus far down in the cavity near the bottom.

As these specimens were smaller, I thought of the

male of Asplanchna, (a Rotiferous genus of which

these animals strongly reminded me,) in which the

digestive viscera are obsolete, and suggested the pos-

sibility of this isolated viscus being a sperm-sac. On

pressure, however, to the extent of bursting the viscus,

the extruded contents were granular, and I could not

trace any Spermatozoa. I believe that it was only

the stomach, got loose by the decay or absorption of

the connecting membranes, and floating freely in the

cavity. Fig. 8 is the representation of one of these-

Ein Naturforscher streift an der Küste von Devonshire Dateien aus der Biodiversitätserbebibliothek Grantia hohe Auflösung Zoologische Illustration Tiere Lebensmittel

1853

Biodiversity Heritage Library

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public domain