other organic wonders of the animal.
Probably enough M. de Quatrefages could not
discover, with his microscope, in specimens
destroyed by alcohol, the organ Colonel
Montagu saw in action in the living animal.
But surely, in this case, the negative of the
learned professor is valueless in presence of
the affirmative of the colonel; although he
was but a colonel. Most certainly the failure
of the learned professor is not sufficiently
decisive of itself to warrant the imagination
of the existence of an annelide of prodigious
length, and yet similar in the structure of
the intestinal canal to the short polypes or
the flat anemonies.

Nothing is known of the most important
part of the nutritive processes of the
worm. His breathing instruments have not
as yet been discovered. How his blood
receives oxygen, or, in other words, how his
food becomes alive, is entirely unknown. The
savans have popped him into alcohol and
pulled him to pieces afterwards to find out
his secrets; but death can never tell the
secrets of life. When I was a very little
boy I had a fiddle given me, and I pulled it
to pieces to find out the thing which made
the music; but I didn't.

The books of natural history say that the
Nemertes lives by sucking the substance of
the anomies. The little two-valved mollusk
resembling an oyster with a hole in the flat
valve, is the anomia, or irregular, as it was
called when it was supposed to be an
odd-looking oyster. Scottish fishermen call the
anomia the Egyptian lamp, a name which
has the merit of involving something of a
description. But the anomia is not an oyster.
It has three muscles, while the oyster has
only one. As to the Nemertes sucking the
flesh of these droll, little bivalves, there is no
evidence; and the accusation is supported by
no better evidence than inference and
suspicion.

An animal may be described as a nervous
system with nutritive and reproductive
mechanisms. The nervous system of the
long-worm seems very simple. Most of the
worms or ringed animals have a collar, which
represents the brain, round the gullet, formed
by the two nerves which connect the upper
dorsal and the ventral lower ganglions. The
nervous system of the Nemertes consists only
of two side ganglions, whence part two strings
stretching to the extremity of the body and
sending off a great number of branching
threads. Two great vessels placed upon the
side accompany these nervous trunks, and a
third meanders upon the median line: all the
three being simple and without ramifications.
The instinct or inward prompting implanted
in this nervous system is similar to the
instinct of the boa constrictor. The fastening
upon the prey, the swallowing of it endwise
when exhausted by fatigue, and the sleep of
satisfied digestion, are all exceedingly like
the boa. When the boa constrictor swallows
his prey, it is curious to see with what
mathematical exactitude he adjusts the spine of
the victim to his spine. I have seen a boa
constrictor pounce upon the throat of a
rabbit; and, after the rabbit was exhausted, if
not dead, the boa changed his hold and
adjusted the head exactly into his mouth,
which was successively and constantly
expanded upon the body of the victim. It
would be singular if the Ne'er-misser of the
rock pools engulfed his gobie exactly as the
serpent of the forests swallows his monkey.

The sea long-worm has a great number of
eggs. The ovaries, which are placed upon
the two sides of the body, are very large. I
am afraid to mention the number of eggs
which it is calculated may be found in the
ovaries of a Nemertes during the season of
gestation; they are as many as four or
five hundred thousand. The eggs of the
Ne'er-missers are eaten in vast numbers by
little fishes, and the vastness of their numbers is
necessary to the preservation of the species.

The incredulity with which the statements
of physiologists are received respecting the
numbers of the eggs of animals will be
removed by a simple explanation of the method
of calculation. The ovary is measured, and a
portion—say, a quarter of an inch square—is
cut out. The number of eggs found in the
quarter of the inch is counted, and then
multiplied by the number of square quarter-inches
which are found in the ovary. The
little fishes eat the eggs of the long-worms,
and the long-worms who escape, revenge their
kin upon the little fishes. And thus their
lives of natural war have passed from the
beginning and will run on to the end of time.

The muscular system of the Nemertes has
never as yet, we fear, been scientifically
studied. Yet marvellous suppleness,
contractility, and expansibility of form, are the
chief characteristics of the animal. The great
number of lateral branching nerves described
by Rathke doubtless command a great
number of muscles of the most delicate structure.

Now ready, price Five Shillings and Sixpence, neatly
bound in cloth,
THE FIFTEENTH VOLUME
OF
HOUSEHOLD WORDS,
Containing the Numbers issued between the Third of
January and the Twenty-seventh of June of the present
year.

Just published, in Two Volumes, post 8vo, price One
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THE DEAD SECRET.
BY WILKIE COLLINS.
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