A Year at the Shore

by Philip Henry Gosse

This species[80] is not more than three inches in length; but there is another[81] much less common, which is larger, richer in colours, and altogether a finer species. A specimen which I lately found was about a foot in length when crawling, and nearly a quarter of an inch in width. The whole body was divided into distinct segments, which in this individual were about two hundred and ten in number; though, according to MM. Audouin and Milne Edwards,[82] they sometimes amount to nearly five hundred, and the worm has been found two feet in length. The head is small, terminated by two pairs of very minute antennæ, but surrounded at what we may call the neck by four pairs of rather long feelers (tentacular cirri), with a fifth pair which are minute and rudimentary.

Plate 18.
P. H. GOSSE, del. LEIGHTON, BROS.
PEARLY NEREIS. RAINBOW LEAF-WORM.

The colours are very beautiful. The leaf-like fins of the sides, which are somewhat heart-shaped, are of a yellowish green hue, occasionally clouded with blackish; the middle portion of the back, which is exposed, is of a rich brown, but flushed with the most glowing iridescence of blue and purple; while the whole under parts are of a pearly flesh-colour. As it crawls over the stones, it throws its body into the most elegant lateral curves, while its suppleness and great length cause it to cling close to the rock; and thus its outline takes the form of every projection and depression over which it is wandering.

When disturbed, and often without any apparent provocation, we see the under side of the tiny head rise from the ground, swell out, and turn itself inside out, as you turn a stocking, until a great pear-shaped bag is protruded, fully eight times as long, and thrice as broad as the entire head. Its whole surface is rough and papillose, and around its extremity, which is the largest part, there is a row of small knobs or warts. This curious organ is found under similar conditions in very many Annelids; it is commonly called the proboscis, or evertile œsophagus; but in truth it is a special and peculiar apparatus, with little analogy with anything found in higher animals: it is in some species furnished with strong horny teeth, and is doubtless employed for the capture of living prey, and the conveyance of it to the stomach.

The tail of the specimen I refer to was evidently being renewed after having been accidentally lost. For the body-segments ended abruptly, and were followed by a portion, not more than an eighth of an inch long, white, and excessively delicate; but which, when examined with a powerful magnifier, displayed a division into segments, each segment carrying its proper cirri; I could count twenty segments within that minute space, the last of which carried the usual pair of stylets.

REPRODUCTION OF ORGANS.

I find among my notes a record of a specimen of Phyllodoce, which, if not identical with this, was closely allied to it, in which I observed the continuance of vitality after the severance of the creature into parts. It was sent to me from Torquay, when I lived near London. When it arrived I found that about an inch and a quarter of the anterior extremity was detached from the remainder, which measured about four inches. The former was motionless, contracted, and seemed lifeless; the latter moved freely. I put both into an old aquarium. The long posterior portion glided about among the stones for two days, exactly like a living healthy animal; the anterior part remained motionless and contracted until the third day, when I saw it also gliding over the stones in a most lively manner, rearing its head, and feeling about in the manner of a caterpillar. Eight days after its arrival, the head portion was still active and apparently healthy, but the hinder part had become motionless and was evidently dead. I find no further record of the case, and probably the anterior part ultimately died without reproduction; but the length of the period of its survival in apparent vigour, renders it not improbable that in the open sea, under the influence of abundant oxygen, and suitable food, the wanting parts might have been renewed to the fore-part, if not to both.

To return to my more recent captive, however. I killed it for cabinet preservation by putting it into fresh water, where it presently died, with the noticeable circumstance that it threw out mucus in such profusion that the whole body was enveloped in a mass, much thicker than itself, of clear jelly, excessively tough and tenacious.