The Earthworm and the Common House Fly Author:James Samuelson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER III. MODE OF REPRODUCTION IN THM EARTHWORM,—ITS HABITS. —DWELLING. USES IN THE FORMATION OF THE SURFACE- SOIL.—CONCLUSION. In our last letter we rev... more »iewed cursorily the chief portions of the Worm's anatomy, and must now devote a short space to the consideration of its organs and mode of reproduction. The worm, in common with many others of the humbler animals, is remarkably endowed in this respect, each creature possessing within itself both the male and female organs of reproduction. These strongly resemble each other in appearance, for both consist of a series of what physiologists term " tubuli," or little tubes, one set of which serves for maturing the female ova, and the other for the development of the male spermatozoa, little motile fructifying bodies visible only under the microscope. At certain seasons of the year, when the ova are ripe, and ready for fecundation, a number of the rings, usually from four to eight (PL II. fig. 2), situated at about the anterior third of the body, become enlarged, and this swelling, which you willdoubtless often have noticed, strongly resembles a healing wound, for which it is usually mistaken by the uninitiated. From this portion of the body a glutinous substance, secreted by special glands, exudes; and although, as just observed, the worm is hermaphrodite, yet contact with another of its species being necessary for fecundation, the creature leaves its underground haunts at night, and, coming to the surface, adheres by its swelled and glutinous rings to the same rings upon the body of another worm. Through this act, the ova and spermatozoa are liberated in each worm from the respective tubuli in which they were contained, and pass into the general cavity of the body ; they there encounter each other, and fructification of...« less