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ANNELIDÆ. The marine Annelides of the island have not as yet been investigated; a cursory glance, however, amongst the stones, on the beach at Trincomalie and in the pools that afford convenient basins for examining them, would lead to the belief that the marine species are not numerous; tubicole genera, as well as some nereids, are found, but there seems to be little diversity, though it is not impossible that a closer scrutiny might be repaid by the discovery of some interesting forms.
That this animal had not strayed accidentally into the Lepas, but appertained to it as a regular and permanent guest, is evidenced by its considerable size in proportion to the narrow entrance of the test of the Lepas, by the complete absence of the iridescence which usually distinguishes the skin of free Annelides and especially of the Amphinomidae, by the formation and position of the inferior setae, etc.
Now, in zoology there only remains to be mentioned the division of the articulates, so it must be that it was on this division that Cousin Benedict's only passion was expended. Yes, and still it is necessary to select. This branch of the articulates counts six classes: insects, myriapodes, arachnides, crustaceans, cirrhopodes, and annelides.
It was a palm grove, surging up between the rocks, but the rocks were only pebbles, and the palm trees, annelides of the sea, were simply worms holding themselves in upright immovability.
Among these were four previously unknown species of mammiferous animals, forty-five of fishes, thirty of reptiles, besides rare kinds of molluscs, polypes, annelides, &c., &c. The rules of the French service required that Freycinet should be summoned before a council of war to answer for the loss of his ship.
We know of no ancestral form among the true Annelides, nor is it probable that it was derived from the intestinal worms. The only worm below the true Annelides that suggests any remote analogy to the insects is the singular and rare Peripatus, which lives on land in warm climates.
Often we rounded high rocks scarped into pyramids. In their dark fractures huge crustacea, perched upon their high claws like some war-machine, watched us with fixed eyes, and under our feet crawled various kinds of annelides. At this moment there opened before us a large grotto dug in a picturesque heap of rocks and carpeted with all the thick warp of the submarine flora.
But that the insects may have descended from some low worms is not improbable when we reflect that the Syllis and allied genera of Annelides bear appendages consisting of numerous joints; indeed, the strange Dujardinia rotifers, figured by Quatrefages, in its general form is remarkably like the larva of Chloëon.
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