It is somewhat humiliating. to realize that each one of -ys has descended from a worm. Somewhere back in the ancestral line of nearly all living creatures on the, earth toda: included, was a worm, or worm-like which for a period carried on the line of des~ cent, Exactly what that worm was like is not known, but, if the number of different of worm to be found in the world today i thing to go by, we have an extraordinarily Wide choice. It must have been of the very simplest form, such as hardly exists at the present time, for all existing worms are more Or less specialized. This was brought home to me the other day, when a friend sent me a bottle containing a worm of the most remarkable appearance. Measuring over two feet in length, very slender, of a yellowish colour, slimy, this specimen was almost the most loathsome thing I had ever set eyes on. It had a peculiar wide flattened spade-like head—if, indeed, it was its head—and a slender pointed tail and was writhing inside the boítle, its slimy body clinging to the glass. I have several times come across similar specimens in the country round Shanghai, but was never able to preserve one. They seemed too fragile, breaking to pieces as I tried to gather them off the ground. Reference to the Natural History books reveals the fact that this strange and altogether unpleasant-looking worm belongs to the great branch or phylum of Flat Worms, or Platyhelmenthes, the class Turbellaria, the order Tricladida, the family Bipaliidae, and the genus Bipalium—which seems altogether too much classification and nomenclature to waste on a mere worm. Yet there it is, and that is what seriously-minded scientists have done in the way of fitting this particular worm into its proper place in the orderly scheme of Nature. Bipalium as we must call this worm, has the most remarkable habits. Of all things it has chosen the common earthworm of our gardens for its regular food. How this slender fragile worm can cope with such a sturdy form as Lumbricus, the common earthworm, is a puzzle, but. that does so is vouched for by competent zoologists, who have caught it in the act. And what is strangest. of all is that Bipalium's mouth is not in its head, bat is
long body. Through its mouth, apparently, it somewhere about the middle of its extends its pharynx in the form of a thin skin all over the struggling earthworm, whose tissues gradually pass into its intestines, causing a Seat dissension of its body. This process takes Cie hours, after which our Bipalium may go for as many as three months without need of more food. Exactly what species our Shanghai worm belongs to I cannot say; but it is certainly very close to the form Bipalium kewense, whose home is the forests of Samoa, but which has been accidentally introduced human No young people in former- days have had to face such a mass sex appeal as is evident today in books, plays, music, and, above all, in the cinema—Dr, Drummond Shiels.
The really vital, purposeful, and essential new music that has been written at the moment has been written by those composers who find that the accepted forms are the ones that suit them best—Dr. Vaughan Williams.
7t seems to me a most precarious! argument to urge that because the Apostolic ministry in the beginning was entirely masculine therefore for all time it must remain masculine.—Dean W.. R. Matthews.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.